weekend

I love long weekends! Especially when they include nieces, wine & cheese surprise birthday parties, and sushi.

In exactly one week I will be done with everything school related (that is, finals and final projects) and earlier tonight I just finished my last college essay ever (in Italian and about food blogs! go figure).

I'm looking around my little room and remembering the day I moved in last September. I made David get up at 8 in the morning because I wanted to be here early. I met Jenna for the first time in the parking lot. I rearranged the furniture and removed the closet doors.

Now my room is a disaster. Everything is unkept and sprawled out so I can "get to it" once I'm done with all of my school work. On my last day I don' t think I'll have David with me, Jenna is already moved out, and I have to move the furniture back to where it originally was.

I feel like I'm completing some kind of circle. This room will be exactly as it was when I first moved in (assuming I can replace those closet doors correctly...) and it'll be like I was never here. It's a life lesson I'd never expected from college.

In other news, I went to see Bridesmaids with David and cried during almost the entire movie. I'm not sure what was wrong, I just couldn't help it.

monday breakfast

Somehow, April was one of the craziest months and all of a sudden May is half-way over. With less than a month until graduation, Anna, Sarah, and I are trying to do more "roomie" things together before the year is over without us realizing it. The only problem? As much as we want to do things together, we will always have schedules that don't always work out for things like weekend brunch.

The solution? Monday morning breakfast. Complete with fresh mimosas, asparagus + leek quiche, pancakes, and a fruit salad. I may have felt in "weekend mode" for a few hours post-breakfast, but it sure made me enjoy Monday mornings more than I usually do.

our last dinner all together

Dinner last Thursday kind of redefined "family style" for me. Jenna moved out early so for our last dinner together, we went to Pizzaiolo and had one of the best meals of my life. I don't even think I had this many courses while I was in Italy!

We began with colorful cocktails-- campari, bourbon, chartreuse-- and split a few appetizers between us. Even though we only got a few bites each, I think that this method was best because it allowed all of us to taste each thing without getting too full. (Their little gems salad was my favorite!)

Somehow I completely forgot to take any photos of the pasta we had... but their puttanesca was fantastic (and I don't really like eggplant). Jenna's mom picked out a really nice bottle of red wine and it went perfectly with the pasta and pizza. But really, their pizza is amazing. Delicate yet flavorful.

And just when I thought I couldn't possibly eat another bite... dessert. With three different dessert wines. Prior to this, I'd only tasted port while visiting a vineyard, but it was really nice to try the Riesling, Malvasia, then the Port in contrast to one another. (And alongside the dessert, of course).

I know that our last meal together wasn't home cooked and I didn't have one of my trademark fiascoes, but just sitting together and talking for hours over amazing food was the perfect way to end our year altogether. Anna, Sarah, and I are all still in our apartment until early June, but it won't be the same without Jenna. Wonderful food and even better roommates perfectly sum up our year together.

weekend

After turning in two of my final papers in last week, this weekend was a lot more enjoyable. On Friday night our apartment was filled with people- there was Sarah's amazing Indian feast, Jenna's legendary cocktails, and more noise than our apartment has seen in months. David came to visit again so we had another fun game night (except this time we didn't end at 4am).

Come Saturday the weather was beautiful. Anna and I made carrot cake muffins (coming soon), David surprised me by bringing my beloved spaetzle (which I cooked with lots of cheese then served with polenta), and I lay on the couch enjoying the sunshine and warm breeze. We took a quick trip home to visit my nieces (see below), have a pizza night, and enjoy being home and being together.

Please note Raiza's adorable face below. I firmly believe that this is the most hilarious face that an 18-month-old baby has ever made. With Elmo.

Sunday was a little disorienting with the time change-- I accidentally adjusted my cell phone after it had already automatically changed. I was two hours off for most of the day, but Panera honey-oat toast for breakfast and midday drives along beautiful 280 set things right.

mardi gras dinner

Maybe I should have a whole section of my blog dedicated to the delicious things Jenna makes/ brings to the dinner table. I've certainly accumulated a lot: pad thai, tuna casserole, japanese desserts, mille crêpes... the list is endless.

Last night was another amazing Jenna-meal. In honor of Mardi Gras she made shrimp jambalaya, healthy fried chicken (you'll have to ask her about that), and brought adorable Mardi Gras chocolate cupcakes from Whole Foods. I had one-too-many servings, per usual. And it was completely worth it. I love this apartment.

spinach and mushroom risotto

Risotto has become my go-to recipe. It's easy to change so that it incorporates seasonal vegetables or you can pretty much just add whatever you want. My friend Heather, who I hadn't seen for a year since we were in Italy, came over for dinner so I thought it might be fun to have risotto. I knew I wanted spinach and I knew I wanted mushrooms. I also felt confident enough in my general knowledge of risotto that I was able to pull it together without a recipe. I'm so proud! It was so creamy and delicious. Heather and I ate the whole thing! Just kidding... the dish probably serves 6 to 8. But it did make for some really delicious leftovers.

spinach and mushroom risotto

1 quart (32 oz.) vegetable stock
2 cups water
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 cups of arborio rice
3/4 cup white wine
10 shitake mushrooms, sliced (or 2 cups sliced of whatever you want)
3-4 cups (5 oz.) fresh, finely chopped spinach
1/2 cup grated parmigiano reggiano
salt and pepper to taste

In a medium pot, bring vegetable stock and water to a boil. Reduce heat to low and let simmer. In a large pan, sautee the garlic and onions in olive oil until soft. Add rice and stir for 2 minutes, until lightly toasted. Add white wine and stir until absorbed. Once absorbed, add one and a half ladles of warm stock to the rice mixture, stirring until absorbed. Repeat this process until you have two ladle left to add.

During the ladle process, sautee the mushrooms in olive oil until cooked and season with salt and papper. At the second to last ladle, add the spinach with the stock and stir. Once absorbed, add the last ladle with the mushrooms. Stir in the parmigiano and add salt and pepper to taste. Voila.

pancake balls

Yes. They are pancakes, and yes they are perfectly formed balls. With either chocolate chips or blueberries in the middle. The secret to these little bites of heaven is a Japanese contraption called a takoyaki grill. Traditionally, "takoyaki" is a savory Japanese dough ball with green onions and octopus inside (note the little octopus on the grill!). Well, we've made the traditional kind (more on that later) but I couldn't resist sharing the pancake version first.

Basically, you grease each mold, add batter (and filling), and slowly rotate the balls with a pick. Each time you slightly turn the batter over, it slowly creates a complete circle and whatever you put in the middle becomes entirely enclosed. And melted, in the case of chocolate chips.

Jenna imported these babies all the way from Japan, but I just found them available on Amazon as well. The Amazon ones are a little different, because you'll need to use your stove to keep the grill hot, while Jenna's are electric so we can use them in the middle of our dining table. It's optimal for an eat-as-you-make-breakfast kind of morning.

Next time? I'm going to try these with pumpkin.

PS- For all of you who were wondering, on Sunday Jenna used the pad thai recipe from the NY Times, except she used pre-made sauce (tamarind paste is hard to find).