da Bears

  Still feeling terrible, but I had to show this picture of my boys before the opening game because they are just so adorable and it makes me feel a bit better.

  For anyone who knows Pat and his family knows they are OBSESSED with the Bears. I received a Bears jersey during my rehearsal dinner and last year, I just had to buy a jersey for Wrigley. (Patrick first said it was ridiculous, but I know he loves that I bought it.) P can probably tell you just about anything and everything about the Bears. I am not even as obsessed with Auburn as P is with da Bears.

  Last Sunday was a very sad day in our household as the Saints beat the Bears. I have a feeling that I should have put Wrigley in his jersey and should have worn my shirt, so this weekend, especially, we will all be decked out for the game. Maybe I'll try to get a family picture to show y'all. Beardown!!

Woman, stop taking my picture!

Blegh.

Feeling sick from a major sinus infection and right ear infection, but glad to have my wee man keeping me company.

Twisted

Just hanging out with the roo.

Meat and Potatoes

  When Patrick broke his wrist, his sweet parents sent us this extremely large box of assorted meats and more from Omaha Steaks. I mean, I had to completely rearrange our freezer when the box came because there was so much food!! I haven't ever really had anything from Omaha steaks before and y'all, this stuff is good! So, Tim and Diana, thank you, thank you, thank you!! I was able to make this recipe I found on Foodgawker (cut in half) with the hot dogs (pretty good, probably better because the hot dogs were huge!) and then I decided to make a dinner of meat and potatoes with the ribeye steaks.

  I made a salad with homemade Caesar dressing that I'm obsessed with and the homemade yeast rolls that I made when Kate and Allison came over to my house for dinner. I baked the asparagus in the oven at 400 degrees after tossing them in EVOO and Tony Chachere's for about 15-20 minutes. Delicious! I love mine extra crispy and burnt, so you might want to take them out sooner than I did.

  I marinated the steaks in some soy sauce, worcestershire sauce, pepper, and lemon juice for several hours as soon as I got home from work then made Pat grill them once he got home from work. As much as I love to cook, I have yet to tackle the grill; I just leave that to Patrick for now and handle everything else. 

 I make these twice baked potatoes all the time and they are super simple and incredibly tasty! I received this cookbook from one of my mom's friends at one of my wedding showers and the recipes are great and easy to make! Pick a copy up immediately; you won't be disappointed!!

Printables:

Caesar Dressing

Homemade Rolls

Twice Baked Potatoes

An Evening at Woodfire Grill

  Kathryn and I decided that we wanted to surprise the boys with a night out at Woodfire Grill. Pat and I went over to their condo where the boys proceeded to try and guess where we would be going. I thought about blindfolding the boys, but didn't get that far. I did drive, however, Dave said he knew immediately where we were going once we turned out of their building. UGH! We can hardly ever surprise them!

Patrick and I have been there before with my parents and we loved it, but we knew we wanted to go back and try the Chef's Tasting menu. Kat and Dave have also been several times and were up for the challenge. We were seated upstairs above the bar in a private room that can seat up to 22, I believe our waitress told us. There was one other party behind us, but we hardly noticed them! I forgot to take pictures of all the food because I was scarfing it down too quickly, but we decided upon the 5 course tasting menu. Um, delicious.

We were first treated to an amuse-bouche with "foods that had pits" as our waitress described. I can't really remember what it was, but it was good! I know there was avocado in it. The first course was shrimp with a light tomato broth. I took a spoon and lapped it up! 

The second course (that I forgot to take a picture of) was trout. I was nervous about this one because I normally don't order fish like trout, but I was pleasantly surprised.

The next course was teriyaki duck. Oh. my. Absolutely delicious. I cleaned the meat off the bones. The sauce was ridiculous and I again cleaned my plate.

Next up was pork belly two ways over polenta with a peach (!) and tempura fried okra. Yup, you guessed it, nobody left it (well, I think Dave cleaned the leftovers from Kat's plate). The slice of peach could have been so wrong, but Kevin did it just right.

 Above pictured was our dessert which was delicious. There was a chocolate sauce, spongy tres leches cake with ice cream and a yummy wafer on top. Sorry for my lack of detail, but trust me, it was amazing. Maybe Kathryn will remember the details. Dave also chose a great wine, a claret by Steltzner, to pair with our surprise dinner.

  Afterwards, we met up with Danielle and her friend at Ri Ra, an Irish pub in Midtown. The band was fun and we enjoyed dancing for a little after our delicious dinner! If you are ever in Atlanta and are feeling adventurous, I would highly recommend the chef's tasting menu (either the 5 or 7 course, but 5 was perfect for me and Kat though the boys vowed they could have done 7) at Woodfire Grill. Plus, it's always fun seeing someone from tv (Chef Kevin) running around the place! Yummy!!

We Will Always Remember

Thank you for serving our country, past, present, and future. We will never forget.

It's All Greek To Me

  Okay, today is fall in Atlanta. I took Wrigley on a walk after I ran 2.61 miles at the gym while still wearing my shorts and t-shirt and about halfway through our little stroll, I realized that I was a little chilly. Now I know some of y'all think this is not cold at all, but sadly, I have turned on my heat. Our house gets really cold (it was 67 degrees when I got home from work) and the blanket and sweatpants weren't quite enough. Good thing my house heats up nicely!!View 24-Hour Storm Report for Atlanta Area

	Tonight	Tomorrow	Tomorrow Night
Cloudy	Showers	Cloudy	Partly Cloudy
62°F	58°	70°	57°
Feels Like: 62° Get FREE weather on your desktop	Low	High	Low
Past 24-hr: Precip: 0 in Snow: 0 in	Chance of Rain: 40%	Chance of Rain: 20%	Chance of Rain: 10%
Wind: From SSW at 8mph	Wind: SW at 10 mph	Wind: WSW at 7 mph	Wind: WNW at 7 mph
Through 2am: Cloudy with temperatures steady near 61F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph.	Rain showers early becoming more intermittent overnight. Low 58F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.	Cloudy skies. High around 70F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.	Partly cloudy. Low 57F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph.

  I'm finally getting around to posting my Greek recipes that you must try! I have a favorite Greek restaurant in Jackson called Keifer's and I miss it so much! I wish I could open one here in Atlanta because I often crave their amazing gyros with tzatziki sauce, marinated cucumbers, and hot cottage fries. One of my friends, Megan, shared these recipes with me and I am so delighted she did!

Feta Dressing

  Fair warning though, if you make either the feta dressing or the marinated cucumbers, you might want to half the recipes at least because both of them make a ton. You can keep the feta dressing for a while in the fridge, but I wouldn't eat the cucumbers for much longer than a few days.

Marinated Cucumbers

  Keifer's has grilled pita with feta cheese or mozzarella cheese (pita with feta or pita mozz) and I have to say, this is pretty dead on!!

Pita with Feta

Printable recipes:

Yogurt Feta Dressing

Marinated cucumbers

Pita with Feta

Labor Day Musings

We were supposed to go to the beach this weekend, but Tropical Storm Lee had other plans. Pat and my family didn't really want to drive down there just to hang out in the rain. Instead, last night we let the beach come to us! I made Kathryn's shrimp creole, fried some okra, and made some crusty bread to dip into the skrimpies. Delicious!! After eating wings on Friday night and pizza on Saturday night while watching football ALL DAY LONG, I figured we needed to have a little home cooked something.

Frying that okra!

First time frying okra Mama's way!

This trick never gets old--Pat was entertaining himself while I cooked

I was so proud of our meal that I had to FaceTime my fam in Jackson to show them what they were missing! I know, I'm terrible! For dessert since Pat has such a sweet tooth, we tried to make chocolate mousse. It was a little too grainy and bitter for me, but it has a good base so I will try it again soon. I'm thinking that I will have to add a little sugar and something else to get the flavor where I want it. I am excited to try it again and welcome any tips or advice from y'all!

Mmm, fried okra

I have to include all of these recipes because they were just so good!! (And I need your help on the mousse!)

Shrimp creole

Printables:
Artisan bread (I found this recipe on this amazing blog. Go here, you won't regret it--http://www.alexandracooks.com/2008/06/22/artisan-bread-in-five-minutes-a-day-seriously/)
Shrimp Creole
Fried Okra
Chocolate Mousse

Easy artisan bread

It finally started raining a little last night and has continued today. Even though we desperately need the rain, blegh is how it makes me feel! However, I enjoy how all three of us are nestled on the couch as we catch up on our shows from last week. I've got tons of recipes I have been meaning to share, but I just haven't made the time. Perhaps I can blame Pinterest or foodgawker for this? Alas, I will try to do better!

To finish out this weekend, we finally made it out of the house today (in the rain!) and picked up some canvases from Michael's for an upcoming project that will hopefully turn out well and we ran over to Total Wine and found some great bottles we had been wanting to try. Then we ran over to my neighbor's house (hi, Laura!) for an inside cookout and chowed down on some great food. I took over one of the Comeback dressings I made yesterday (yes, I couldn't decide which one I wanted to make, so I made both) and everyone liked it! Can't wait to share!