Wisconsin Restaurant Expo 2012

Sorry about the sporadic posting everyone, life truly has been crazy! But here I am now, again, to share a little of what goes on in the world around me. I'm stepping out of my normal posts about children/ home life to share something special that my little bro and I got to do. We went to the 2012 Wisconsin Restaurant Expo together!

My little brother, Jacob is currently enrolled in culinary school and let me to you everyone, he is amazing! Growing up my family and I all simultaneously agreed that out of everyone he would be the successful business man. Between his business knowledge and his mad cooking skills, he is a force to be reckoned with! Of course, I too have always been in love with my kitchen and cooking (keep watch on mmmmm my blog for an amazing recipe for homemade Naan bread!) So needless to say, a restaurant expo was right up our ally.

The whole event was great, but one of the most exciting parts was that Duff Goldman was the keynote speaker! He was great and shared a lot of helpful information. He definitely had his own style, not what I was used to as far as presentation style speeches go. He was kind of sporadic and he peppered tons of little funny stories and antidotes throughout his presentation. He veered off track several times too. The whole thing presentation was both entertaining and informative. We both liked it a lot!

Afterwards he was available for book signing for his bestselling book Ace of Cakes: Inside the World of Charm City Cakes. Jake brought something much cooler for him to sign, one of his mega big pastry cookbooks from school. Awesomeness! Apparently Duff thought it was neat too, he wrote: Yes! This book is much more useful than mine! Rock on, Jacob.

Jake was thrilled, as you can imagine. After he signed Jake's book he looked up at me, and kind of looked at my hands like, "Where's her book?" For some reason, even though I knew I was going to book signing, it never occurred to me to bring a book, I just had my camera, of course. I had been snapping pictures the entire time Duff was signing my brother's book, so when he was looking at my bookless hands I commented "Oh, I didn't bring a book because I just wanted a picture, because a picture is worth a thousand words, so by me taking your picture instead of you signing my book, it's like, better than getting a thousand signatures!" ....Um.... Slight pause..... He looked at me like I was an idiot or completely nuts.

Ah well :)

Here are some of the highlights of our day:

This is Corin Beier. She was one of the students that competitively entered the cooking competition! She was super nice and just looked so "chef-ish" I had to get her picture for the blog. :) Her and my brother were on opposing schools. Fortunately, I think she cooks better than she trash talks ;) Like I said, she was super sweet :)

Afterwords, before going home, we stopped at the old out of commission Pabst brewery. I don't know how old the buildings are, but they look to be at least 100. Very cool!

We had a great day and I wish I had time to share more, we took over 200 photos!

Snowy Cozy Days

After a whole winter of almost no snow whatsoever (for Wisconsin anyway) this spring has finally brought our expected snow globe white out snow fall! This past weekend we got just a ton of snow, it was breathtakingly beautiful! It was just like the movies, where someone goes to bed to the snow falling down, then wakes up in the morning to find everything covered in a think, shimmery blanket of white. It was just lovely!

So, it wasn't until March that I got to take the kids out in a sled! So I was very excited about that. :) I wanted to spend more time taking pictures, but that was impossible because my poor children's little legs couldn't make it through the drifts and they kept face planting into the snow. It was adorable, actually. :) Every Midwestern child needs lots of memories of face planting in the snow. :)

I just love the "powdered sugar effect" It looks like their playing in piles of sugar! That's the way I see it. anyway :)

After being out for only about 25- 30 minutes we came back into our nice cozy home. We cleaned up before starting some crafts. Look at Elle Bell handling the vacuum like a pro!

I am always on the lookout for things to do with the kids to help us all pass the time with something other than cleaning and watching tv during the day. Building block towers with mega blocks still remains their favorite thing to do, but on our snowy day we had fun with construction paper!

It was a great snowy day craft. We made everything out of paper (Ha! Come to think of it, everything but paper snowflakes :) I cut out animals for them to play with, they colored on the paper, we practiced writing out all of our names, they picked out colors and I made them paper crowns and we made paper chains. The whole package of paper cost only $1.00 and I bet we didn't even use half! It kept us all busy for a good 2 hours (add an extra 15 minutes for me and cleanup ;)

Yummmy Red Bull :)

It was just a great day. It's hard not feel in auto pilot 24/7 and just go through the motions as the hours in a day just pass by. Winters here in Wisconsin have always been a struggle for me, but being a stay at home mom with 2 little people can just be hard. I think it's that way for a lot of people who lives here though. You just have to really make sure to plan things to do so you don't get to caught up in having nothing to do!

Well, it was just about 70* here just a few days after the snowy day. I love the snow... but we are so ready for warmer days! Here comes Spring!

The Homemade Pasta "UnRecipe"

Although this is a "recipe" for pasta, this is actually an un recipe. I'll give all the directions, but if you go a head and make them for yourselves, you'll see that you really made them without any directions at all. So this is my "un recipe" for the best homemade pasta. Ever. In the world. Yes.

The Homemade Pasta "Un recipe"

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• I cup of flour
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 2 Tablespoons of water

3 servings

Directions:

Mix together the salt and flour. Make a "well" or hole that doesn't quite reach the bottom of the bowl and crack a large egg into it. You can do this in a bowl, like I did. Or, if you're feeling brave, do like the Italians do and Just heap the mound of flour directly on the counter and add the eggs into that.

Since this supposedly is only 3 servings I went ahead and tripled it. As I was adding in the flour I was disrupted by the littles running around me and lost my train of thought (Oh Lord, this is sad. I only had to count to three, for three cups, and I lost my train of thought. This is a new low for me and slightly disturbing) Anyway, I lost my "train of thought" and could not remember if I had done 2 cups or 3 already and I was in a hurry, and it looked about 3 cups but I added about a half cup extra anyway.

Go ahead and mix that and add the water. The dough should be sticky and firm. This WILL NOT be enough water. I ended up doing about 10 Tablespoons of water and 4 Tablespoons of olive oil. Just add enough water and oil to make a dough you can knead and that looks all doughy and happy.

Knead this for about 4 minutes. I then let mine sit for 15 minutes.

Once that is done you can either roll out the dough with a roller or use a pasta maker. I used my nifty pasta maker that my mom gave me.

I took about 1/8 of the dough, floured it and rolled it through twice before rolling it through the pasta side. I decided to let the kids help. This, of course doubled the time it took to do this, but that's ok. :) After a while of this though E. became bored and wandered off and I set D. off to the side of where I was working. She happily, very happily kneaded her little ball of dough in the flour she kept stealing when I wasn't watching her. :)

Once you have the pasta, let it dry out for a bit before cooking. I let mine sit and become slightly dry, about 20 minutes.

Start a salted pot of water boiling. These noodles take about 8 minutes (depending on how long you let them dry out for.) to cook. It doesn't look like there a ton of noodles, but they are so very filling! All four of us ate our fill, and there was still enough left over for another whole dinner's worth, at least!

The rest of the family had the normal pasta sauce, but I rinsed mine until they were cool and added in just a bit of ranch dressing, a tiny bit of Sun Dried Tomato vinaigrette and a slight squeeze of lemon. It was perfect!

Although this takes longer to make than dumping a box of pasta in a pot, it was worth it! It doesn't even taste like pasta, it taste like long strips of Italian wheat goodness! Try it, you won't be disappointed!

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