A Holiday How-To: So the Oven Broke on Turkey Day...

Well, it's Thanksgiving...which means family, food, and football on TV. Just before the holiday could kick off, however, Mama D's oven broke down. Not to be deterred (and having a turkey large enough to feed a small army), she figured out how to grill out bird on the gas grill, cook the stuffing in a crock pot, and still have dinner on the table by mid-afternoon. Here she is checking out the turkey's progress.

Update, 12:05 pm: Mama D says the turkey takes 4 hours on the grill, and is turning out so brown and lovely that she may grill the turkey every year from now on. You heard it here first, friends: necessity is indeed the mother of delicious invention.

Where have you been?

My cat was waiting for me when I got home to Mama D and Chris' house for Thanksgiving...this is her doing her "I'm so cute and adorable when I stick my paw out, why don't you pet me?" look.

Spanish Lessons

Tested out my fledgling knowledge of Spanish on the windshield while stuck in traffic between Chicago and Milwaukee because of a crazy semi-truck accident. Apparently, I quiero the windshield. Maybe I'd better study up some more.

Embarrassing Birthday Trip

Some parents like to really embarrass their children when birthday time rolls around. And some people really enjoy helping their friends' parents plan that really embarrassing birthday experience. This past week, that's exactly what happened when the mom of my friend Chris enlisted our help to plan a spectacularly embarrassing birthday dinner for Chris and his younger brother Joe at Organ Piper Pizza in West Allis, otherwise known as the Music Palace of Metro Milwaukee.

Joe, on the left, and my friend Chris on the right, look plenty embarrassed. And although the pizza is pretty solid, the real attraction is the old-school organ, which is attached to several rooms of organ pipes as well as other sound making devices attached to the ceiling and walls, like sirens and train whistles. An ancient old man named Ralph plays old standards, show tunes, and songs from movies. Below, old Ralph unfurls the American flag for a rousing rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

Best part of the evening was when my friend Ben joked that the place-with its families with small children target audience and loud, cheesy music-made it a great place to take a girl on a first date if you didn't really like her. Classic stuff.

Baking Again

A little almond pound cake with vanilla drizzle...by far the most easy dessert I have in my repetoire because I can cheat and use box mix or store frosting for the drizzle if I want. No one needs to know, and it comes out delicious either way.

Hard at Work

Some of my favorite things- my roommate Brian in the kitchen where he works and a basket of french fries...kind of awesome.

Dinner and Dessert

I know, I know, another food post. Maybe you'll forgive me once you see how delicious this all is. On Saturday night, I had the most amazing chicken florentine with pesto sauce while in the midst of a baking session.

On the menu for dessert - apple pie. I tried a new recipe of my own, which I think turned out quite well (I combined a recipe I got from Mama D with another I pulled from Epicurious.com, adding a little extra sugar and small amounts of brown sugar, nutmeg, and vanilla into the usual apple pie filling). I'm proud of the few things I can cook or bake well, so I felt like sharing the pictures of the results with all of you.

The Explorer

This bike, seemingly permanently parked outside of Sven's Cafe in Bay View, looks ready to do some serious exploring. I generally go to Sven's for the French Vanilla Chai, but if some quality exploring time was on the menu, I wouldn't be one to say no.

Amazon Recommends...

Amazon.com is usually spot on with its recommendation system for everything from books to cds to Christmas gifts for your relatives...it has lots of fancy algorithms to figure out what you'll want to buy. So imagine my surprise when Amazon recommended, based on my history of checking out indie rock and hip hop, that I download a song by Weird Al. Suddenly, the internet is trying to tell me it thinks I'm weird.

Indian Summer Day

The weather was something fantastic today - in Wisconsin we usually miss out on any extended period of weather in the 60s...but today was a sunny, wonderful exception.

Ducks took a last celebratory turn around the Veteran's Park lagoon.

The last joggers and kite-flyers were out in full force.

The last yellowing leaves clung onto their trees with the last breath of autumn.

Another Delicious Post

I went to Transfer Pizzeria in Milwaukee for the first time last night, and enjoyed the general atmosphere (they have local art displayed on the walls, and live jazz on Tuesday nights) as well as some decidedly delicious food. If you go, I would highly recommend the bruschetta as well as the Pollo Fungi pizza, which had an unusual name (do you usually think of Fungi as delicious?) but was a dreamy combination of a perfectly hand tossed crust, chicken, mushrooms, onions, and sauce.

On a side note, I realize that I love to blog and talk about food. A lot. So to help myself out, and you all as well, I added food to the list of things I talk about alot on the blog's home page. If you click on it, all of my food related posts should now pop up. I've blogged about food so much that there's actually more than one page of pictures-just hit "older posts" when you get to the bottom. Looking at all that culinary goodness made me so hungry, I had to go eat something.

Halloween - The Morning After

This is my front porch. This is also the wig that my roommate Brian wore out last night for Halloween. Somewhere on the walk up to the front door from the sidewalk, the wig escaped, and has been relaxing on our front steps ever since.

Halloween - Obligatory Zombie Post

My roommate Jill has a good friend named Megan...who happens to be a zombie. She is, in fact, the best zombie bride I've ever seen. In my effort to celebrate Halloween, I felt like I should also celebrate Megan's clear desire to eat brains, or whatever human flesh she can get her cold, undead hands on. While her husband, Craig, looks pretty pleased with the prospect of getting eaten alive, Jill (below, dressed as the USO) still can't believe Megan finds her appetizing.

A Glitch in the Matrix

The two black cats at my friend Amelia's house...almost the same, but not quite. I like how one of the cats' names is Gotti, and Amelia describes him as a "pimp" and says that he does whatever he wants around the house.

Through the Looking Glass

Fall is happening outside of my Dad's living room...the trees are so yellow that when the sun shines into the room the whole place is filled with a warm golden yellow glow. I took a picture of it so that when it's snowy and about 20 degrees below zero outside, I will remember how much I actually like living in a frozen tundra...when it's not so frozen.

In Grandma's Basement

I belong to a family of music lovers, and my Grandma Marge (who still puts on tight fitting jeans and goes out dancing) is no exception. She has a Jukebox in her basement that plays old 45's, and insists on the occasional impromptu dance party...call her a dancing queen, just don't call her old.

Another Typical Family Photo

I love it when my relatives do this: ask us to take a picture and then all look in different directions. This is from yesterday's celebration of my cousin Stephanie's baptism. (She's the baby in the white christening get-up.)

Belated

My belated birthday cake from my Grandma Marge was epic: it looked like a Swiss Cake Roll, and had ice cream in the middle. Nothing says Happy Birthday like Chocolate-chip-ice-cream-birthday-cake. Cheers to that!

Night Lights

I'm a big fan of the effort to light up Milwaukee at night...including the lights on the underside of the Marquette Interchange, the recent lighting of the Art Museum for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, and especially the color-changing lights at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts. My friends and I were taking a stroll past it last night (that's my out-of-focus friend Omar on the bridge).

More autumn-ness

Some general autumn leaves action happening over at the Charles Allis Art Museum on Prospect Ave.