Archives for February 2014

Polar vortex roast.

February 27, 2014 / By Courtney / 4 Comments

It was another dreary and cold winter in Chicago. There didn’t seem to be much else to do than to cook up a big bubbling pot roast, get a few good bottles of red going, invite our friends who love to eat just as much as we do to come over, let the boys run around the home like mad, and bam – call it a night. And that’s precisely what we did.

I’m convinced there is no greater comfort that setting a warm and messy dutch oven on a wooden table to enjoy seconds, thirds, and sometimes….fourths? (Ahem, Catherine). Everything is full and hazy and suddenly the fact that 4 shrieking boys are taking all the cushions off your new RH couch doesn’t matter one bit because you’re eating crusty bread with softened garlicky olives that have been drenched in a rich sauce. Next to good friends. With good wine. Shriek away boys, shriek away.

Let this winter pot roast recipe and your friends help you through the rest of this brutal winter. I promise, for one night, you’ll be happy it’s still chilly.

Winter Pot Roast

2014-02-26 14:15:00

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Ingredients

Winter Pot Roast
Recipe from Curtis Stone

Ingredients

- 4 lbs boneless beef chuck roast
- kosher salt & freshly ground pepper
- 2 TBS olive oil
- 2 yellow onions, chopped
- 12 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
- 1 cup dry red wine
- 4 cups beef stock
- 4 large sprigs of thyme
- 1 large sprig fresh rosemary
- 1/5 lbs fingerling potatoes, halved
- 12 ounces cherry tomatoes, preferably assorted colors
- 1/4 cup pitted green olives

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Pat the beef dry with paper towels and season generously with salt & pepper. Heat a large dutch oven over medium high heat with the oil. Sear the beef on all sides until browned, roughly 12 minutes. Remove to a plate and set aside.
Reduce the heat to medium, add the onions, and cook for 5 minutes or so. Add in the garlic and cook for another minute. Stir in the wine and boil for 1 minute. Stir in the broth and herbs.
Return the beef and any juices to the pot and scatter the potatoes, tomatoes, and olives around it. You should have enough liquid to cover all but the top inch of the meat. If you need to, add more stock or water. Bring to a simmer, cover, and into the oven it goes for 1.5 hours. Turn meat over, and then cook for an additional hour. Remove from the oven and set aside to rest for 30 minutes.
Using a slotted spoon transfer the meat, vegetables, and olives to a large platter. Gently pull the beef into large chunks along its natural separations.
Skim off any fat that has risen to the surface of the cooking liquid and discard the herb stems. Boil the liquid for 20 minutes, until slightly reduced.
Return the beef, vegetables, and olives to the pot and simmer for 5 minutes or until warm. Serve on your table with lots of crusty bread for the sauce.

Adapted from Curtis Stone

A Life From Scratch. https://a-life-from-scratch.com/

Eat up!

wwww.

February 26, 2014 / By Courtney / 5 Comments

Time for another what WE wore Wednesday, which basically means time to show off your little one(s)!

This week’s theme is all about haircuts. As I’m fully aware, both my boys could be mistaken for girls from behind. And actually from the front, B is mistaken for a girl about 95% off the time. Whoops. M came home from baseball evaluations claiming L could ‘barely see from under his hat’ and B just looks, well, like he lives down by the river. Ok, ok, I get the point. YOU try and take a kid for a haircut that was recently pinned down for stitches, removing stitches, and then 18 month old shots. Not so easy, huh?

Here is what we wore on a day of reading, school, and playing ‘night night’ in the kitchen:

On L: Abercrombie jeans, Crewcut tee.

On B: Old Navy ‘skinny’ jean and a Gap tee courtesy of L.

On C: AG jeans, Ann Taylor Loft top. I realize it’s like, 10 degrees out and I’m in short sleeves, but I was cooking a roast all day and I tend to run warm.

On a side note, did you know? It’s National Eating Disorder awareness week, which is something near to my heart. If you or anyone you know is suffering, please, begin here. If you’d like to donate to help insurance companies realize the severity these disorders have on one’s mental health please, donate here and know that:

Over 8 million Americans are suffering, 7 million women and 1 million men.
1 in 200 woman suffers from anorexia.
2-3 women in 100 suffers from bulimia.
Eating disorders are now considered addictions due to the fact that they change and manipulate one’s brain chemistry to associate starvation with reward. This is serious stuff.
Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness.
50% of girls between the ages of 11-13 see themselves as overweight. (this makes me cry).
Treatment ranges from $500 – $2000 per day. Average one month session of in treatment therapy? $30,000.

Please take the time to educate yourself on this important mental health issue. It’s all around us.

C’s picks.

February 23, 2014 / By Courtney / 3 Comments

What a nice weekend we’ve had so far. Playing in the snow, major progress on our master (whew!), lazy nap times, and NO stitches – yippee! Here is our menu plan for what we will be munching on this week:

A pot roast for Sunday dinner sounds like, well, perfection. Curtis Stone (swoon) has an amazing recipe that I can’t wait to try.

Zuppa Tuscana with crusty bread sounds like a great warm up for Monday evening. Love this recipe.

Tuesday night will be t-ball taco night. I’ve decided I’m always going to call them t-ball tacos even though L is now a bit beyond hitting the ball off a tee. He had baseball ‘evaluations’ this weekend. I have to say, I’m quite laid back about the whole thing and you can tell L is as well. He was running from station to station giving high 5’s to friends who had a good hit or a great catch. Yes L, that is exactly what it is all about. You are 7. Enjoy this. We promise you to never get caught up in the drama and to do nothing but encourage your talent and the wonderful heart you have towards your teammates.

Wednesday night is the season premiere of The Americans. Do you watch this show? Oh my goodness, we are obsessed. I wish M would eat homemade borscht, as it would be perfect for the oh so Russian theme. Unfortunately I can’t get him on board. I’m hoping to pick up some sausage and pierogis. All fried up with bacon? Yes please.

We’re going to need a major health boost Thursday night after our Russian feast. Chicken sausage, white bean, and kale stew should help balance us out.

Friday I’m off to the city. Beechick + Glantz girls night out. Watch out!

That’s our line up – let’s here about yours.
C

Nanny’s posole.

February 21, 2014 / By Courtney / 6 Comments

My dear friend Catherine has a dear nanny named Leticia, but we all just call her nanny. I’ve known nanny as long as I’ve known Catherine, which is going on 5 years now and that is precisely how long it’s taken to get her posole recipe. 5 years.

Let me back up a bit here.

I’ve been having bowls of this soothing, spicy, warm on the soul soup for years now on Catherine’s pristine golden granite countertops, small glass of extra chilled sauvignon blanc nearby. I’d always gush over its perfection and casually mention ‘hey I’d love this recipe sometime’, and was always answered with ‘oh nanny doesn’t really have a recipe.’ Ok. Well, she may not open a book and read from a recipe each time she makes it but she knows how to make it, she can write it down (in Spanish), Catherine could translate, and we’d be all set. There, it’s a recipe.

It didn’t work.

I waited and patiently would bring it up again. ‘I’d love that posole recipe sometime….’ ‘Nanny says it’s too hard to make.’ Come on, do they want me to beg?

Then one day nanny came by my home on a hazy summer day to pick up the boys, who seemed to be extra sweaty and muddy like boys always seem to be at my home. We sat on a blanket on the grass in the shade and drank ice water out of mason jars next to my chubby, non mobile B. We had much to say but didn’t exactly know how to understand each other. Finally I complimented her ‘posole’ and nanny couldn’t keep quiet. She rambled off words and used hand motions like I had never seen. Once in awhile I’d catch a word I knew – chicken! lime! – but then they would fade into the beautiful accent of Spanish words spilling out of her mouth. At one point I asked Catherine’s son William, who speaks Spanish, to translate for me. He looked at me like ‘you actually think I’m going to stop digging mulch by the swing set to come over and translate a recipe for you? No way.’

So like the sun lazily fading over the trees in our backyard, the moment had passed, and I seriously regretted not taking Spanish during my school years. Over the next months and years, I’d get a bowl here and there and be ever so thankful but just wonder why I couldn’t have the recipe. As Catherine so perfectly summed it up, ‘you think we were asking her for her first born.’ Yes. Exactly that.

Finally, I pulled the last card I had. It was Christmas time – the season of giving! A wonderful time to ask for the recipe. I told Catherine I wanted nothing else, gave her a kickass gift I picked out at a vintage market in August, and waited patiently.

Nope, no recipe. What the heck…? My (slightly evil) plan didn’t work.

2014 then arrived. The year of dust, germs, and of course, the winter of death as L has so perfectly labeled it. After many rounds of bugs and colds I made one last attempt to Catherine this past Saturday when I had yet another head cold. Please, please, please for the love of God. That soup will clear my sinuses. It will heal me. Get me that damn recipe.

Bam. Something hit home with my friend. It was probably my utter patheticness. She went to work and called me around 10:15 with part 1 – a list of ingredients. Part 2, directions, would be coming at a later time. Apparently it’s just too much to handle all at once.

Well, that all changed around 11:00 when B got hurt pretty bad. I texted Catherine what had happened and that we would be at the ER. Like the wonderful friend she is she cried with me, offered her over the top support, and texted me the sweetest thing to date:

She’s kind of amazing like that. And because Catherine is always true to her word, Sunday she showed up at my doorstep with a massive batch of homemade posole and the promise of the handwritten recipe in Spanish and English within a few days. She paid nanny for all the ingredients and paid her hourly to make it (which nanny is declaring takes 4 hours from start to finish.) Merry Christmas to me…!

Catherine, you are a wonderful friend and nanny? I feel like I owe you my next child.

Nanny has requested that I don’t share her family recipe on the internet and as you can tell, she calls the shots. I totally respect that. I realize this is a bit of a tease and I’m sorry but I’ve been so moved by this recipe I had to write its story. My trade off? If you’re local and dying to find out what all the fuss is about, I am happy to make a (big) bowl for you. Promise.

wwww.

February 19, 2014 / By Courtney / 1 Comment

It’s…..What We Wore Wednesday! That means time to show off your adorable outfit and also your little one; let’s see them! Share with us on Facebook or our new fancy board on Pinterest. We are so in season.

This week I thought I’d give you a little glimpse at what’s it been like sharing a bathroom with my two boys. It’s been real… special. Getting ready in the morning is always a process with a toddler but especially when you aren’t exactly settled. My ‘getting ready supplies’ are in a worn Ann Taylor Loft bag on the floor that is constantly played with by B, and my clothes are God knows where. We start around 8AM by brushing our teeth. We brush our teeth 5-10 times a day. No joke as B is obsessed. We have the whitest smiles in town!

If I can get my face washed before the bus (8:30), I consider it a good start. After that it’s a toss up if any make-up goes on by 10 or so; today wasn’t so lucky. I did get out of yoga pants and a hoodie though, so in my book it’s a success!

Here is what we wore:

On L: J Crew cords, Abercrombie top.

On B: Um, I didn’t get any pics of him out of his Old Navy jammies. His accessories are a hair brush, a bear, a toothbrush, and of course – his Dora band aid covering his stitches from smacking his head open.

On C: J Crew leggings, Ann Taylor loft white tank, and Stone & Cloth denim top. They make the softest denim tops. Ever.

Enough of us – let’s see you!
C