Hi! Long time no see. I’m probably kidding myself to think that you’ve been checking our blog religiously looking for new posts. But it has been quite a while since either of us has been around. I’m on a bit of a personal mission to see if we can turn that around though.

In case you’re wondering where we’ve been, we have been BUSY! (And, in my case, sometimes just a little lazy, but more on that in a minute.) It all started when our camera broke and we had to ship it off to Nikon to get it repaired. That completely stalled our operations in terms of posts about what we’re drinking or cooking at home. And as some of you may already know, $1.25 has been super duper busy with the launch and growth of a side project/passion: Atelier Vie. We’re talking, working full time at his day job and then putting in countless hours at night and on the weekends at the distillery. Words cannot express how proud I am of my hubby and how hard he works every day, but it doesn’t leave him a lot of room for blogging right now.

So, moving on, you would think that with $1.25 gone all the time, I’d probably have even more time to focus on things here at the blog, but I haven’t. Our camera came back and works great now. What’s my excuse then? Donuts. Well, really just one tiny person who we affectionately call Donut. Shortly before we went all radio silent on you guys, we found out we were expecting our first kiddo and I gotta admit, it has kind of stolen my focus. For the first few months I didn’t have enough energy to get off the couch and I certainly wasn’t feeling very adventurous in the kitchen. And then once we made it to spring, I literally became a broken record in terms of my eating. I want steak and blueberries…not together, but pretty much every day. So, I haven’t felt like there was a whole lot to write about.

But enough excuses, I’m going to do my best to do better! $1.25 still makes some pretty awesome cocktails at home (so I hear) and he’s got the inside scoop on at least some of liquor scene in town. Since I’m busy growing a person, I’m trying to cook and eat as healthy as possible and I’m always looking for new ways to accomplish that goal. Oh, and I am still on the blueberry and steak train, so hopefully you won’t mind seeing those two pop up more than normal. (Just to reiterate, I don’t actually eat them together, they just both always sound good!) As we get closer to our little Donut’s arrival I’ll probably be experimenting with things I can make ahead and freeze, so I’ll try to share my adventures in that department too.

This weekend we’re hoping to do a little festing, a little baby prepping (man oh man, that’s a big job!!) and at least a little cooking. Happy Jazz Fest Everyone!

This weekend $1.25 and I did a lot of good eating and drinking.  We managed to get some house projects going too, so all in all it was a pretty perfect October weekend.

We started things off Friday night with a second look at the Smoky Mary from NOLA Brewing at Up on the Roof, a fundraiser for the EJGH foundation.  I’m really loving this beer and will definitely take any opportunity to enjoy a taste!  And if you missed it, you should try to hit Up on the Roof next year.  We’ve been a couple years in a row now and it’s a great event that is a lot of fun.

On Saturday we made another batch of this White Bean Soup from Emeril’s new cookbook, but modified it a little with things we had on hand.  Saturday night we had a lovely date night at Dominique’s.  If you go any time this fall, be sure someone in your party gets the pork chop…YUM!  Then we had a few nightcaps at Twleve Mile Limit (which put me a little OVER my limit…ugh).

Last but not least, Sunday we rounded things out with a pot of $1.25′s favorite chili and drowned our sorrows from the Saints loss.  The spicy chili was the perfect antidote to the sad game and it wiped out any vestiges of pain from the night before.

What did you do for the weekend NOLA?

Hello all! We’ve seem to run into a few glitches with our delightful software. As you can tell our banner has disappeared and our post for today is not here. We will be up and running again as soon as we get to the bottom of this (most likely culprit: operator error).

Sorry we’ve been missing in action, but there’s a reason and one that can be summed up with a nifty little cartoon:

That's right (cartoon from 123rf.com)

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, we’ve lined up a good friend of ours to guest write while we’re gone. I respect his food opinion implicitly, even if I don’t always agree with it. Assuming life doesn’t get to hectic for him, I expect you’ll see a lot of great stuff from him.

You’re in capable hands and we’ll see you when we return. Oh, because someone will ask, we did not get married on a Wednesday.

We turn 1 on Saturday, which is exciting. While we haven’t posted as frequently as we had initially intended, between here and GoNola.com, we still managed to average posts just about every other weekday. For those of you that have been coming around, thanks! For those of you who haven’t, screw it-you won’t read this anyway.

We look forward to continuing to experience New Orleans with each and every one of you.

Last week I had really great plans for you, dear reader. I had a list of treats I was ready to prepare and spotlight here for you, everything from Japanese beef and scallion rolls to ginger green tea ice cream and more. But someone or something out there had a very different plan. Nothing worked. Even if it had a great start and I was licking my fingers as I moved on to step 2, it ended up just plain NOT good. I couldn’t even cook rice well last week.

It started with these beef and scallion rolls I was excited to make one night for dinner. The recipe made it seem so simple. Pound out a flank steak really thin, wrap it around some blanched scallions, marinate it, sear it, slice it into rolls that look a little bit like sushi, and enjoy. But when I got down to it (and was up to my elbows in beef bits), it just didn’t work. The rolls came apart in the marinade and then further disintegrated when I put them in the pan. The rolls that did try to stay together were nothing short of RAW inside when the recipe called for taking them off the fire. So in the end, even the ones that didn’t fall apart I had to take apart so I could cook the beef all the way through. The one saving grace of the whole disaster was that the marinade was quite good. If I hadn’t had the high hopes for the cute little rolls, I would have been satisfied with thinly sliced beef, marinated and then quickly cooked in a wok with the scallions served over rice.

So, now you know how the rice fits in. In the middle of cursing the beef rolls that ended up being just stir fried beef, I decided rice would be a nice addition. 2 cups of water, 1 cup of rice, timer set for 20 minutes. Fairly simple. Except at the end of the 20 minutes, I still had most of the water, the rice was crunchy and it was burning on the bottom. Down the drain went the rice. I mean, come on…RICE?? I can’t even get rice right?

Then I decided to make ice cream. $1.25 played a role here too. He decided he wanted ginger (notice a theme here??) green tea ice cream. No problem. I had a recipe for green tea ice cream, I had a recipe for ginger ice cream, I could just cobble them together. Well, something didn’t work because what I ended up with tasted strangely (and disgustingly) like pumpkin pie. Maybe that would have been ok if I had actually started with a pumpkin, but it was kind of disturbing when I realized that the only resemblance to pumpkin pie was the ginger. It’s still in the freezer, but neither $1.25 nor I have touched it.

Finally, I wanted to make something I found on the internet called “Cake Balls”…I wanted to rename them, but the finished product wasn’t deserving of it. The idea is simple: bake a cake (box or scratch). When the cake comes out of the oven, let it cool just a little bit and then crumble it into a bowl of frosting. Then scoop balls of the cake and frosting and dunk them in melted chocolate. I started out strong. I decided to make yellow cake and vanilla buttercream frosting, both from scratch. Buttercream is scary stuff to me. It involves melting sugar in water and bringing it up to a precise temperature of 240 degrees, pouring it into a meringue slowly and cautiously, and then adding in copious amounts of butter until it all comes together in a delicious cloud. And it did! The frosting was great! And $1.25 declared that the cake was the best cake he’s ever had…ever . A victory!

Until I crumbled it all together, mixed it up and put it in the fridge to cool. Suddenly the best cake ever was kind of weird and not all that yummy. But we thought maybe it would be better at room temperature. I forged ahead and melted the chocolate. I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me, but here’s the thing about putting cold buttercream into hot melted chocolate: it falls apart. I couldn’t get the balls covered in chocolate before they started to melt and suddenly I had a giant mess on my hands. Melted chocolate, melted butter, cake bits all over…it was a disaster. $1.25 was happy with the cake mixture without the chocolate coating, but the finished product really didn’t meet our expectations. At all. Into the trash they went. Sigh.

So, after all of that work, I ended up with a lot of trash to take out and a very disappointing week in the kitchen. But, I did come up with two recipes, each a smaller part of a bigger project, that really held their own. One was the marinade for the beef and the other was the yellow cake. Sorry I don’t have any pictures for you, but I didn’t have the energy for it at the end of all of that. But here are the recipes if you’re feeling adventurous!

All-Occasion Yellow Cake (courtesy of The Gourmet Cookbook):
2 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup whole milk

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl. Beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer with whisk attachment at medium high speed until pale and fluffy, 3-5 min. Beat in eggs one at a time, then beat in vanilla and beat until thoroughly blended, about 5 minutes. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture and milk, alternately in three batches, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Do not overmix.

Spread batter evenly in a prepared pan (buttered and floured, either one 13×9″ or two 8″ rounds). Bake at 350 until cake begins to pull away from the sides of the pan, about 20-25 minutes. Cook for 5 minutes, then invert onto a rack to cool completely.

Japanese Marinade:
1/4 cup sake
1/4 cup Japanese sweet rice wine (Mirin)
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar