Squirrel 3, Andrew 0

A quick update on the squirrel situation:

1. First time the trap was set, the peanut butter was licked clean with no squirrel in sight.
2. The second time, the same thing happened.
3. The third time, Andrew swore he was smearing the peanut butter on this time and he was sure it would work. Yet again, the trap was triggered with no sign of a squirrel.

Now, the trap is sitting in the attic without any bait as Andrew reassess the situation and plans his next method of attack. This includes avoiding Pete's suggestion to mix poison in with the peanut butter, as we don't want a rotting squirrel carcass in the attic.

Graduation Party Venue - Booked!

As some of you might know, May will be an exciting month because:

• My cousin Andrea is graduating from Bristol Community College
• Amy will be graduating from Suffolk Law School
• My parents will be visiting from Japan for two weeks

With the two graduations happening in the same month, Rich, my parents and I decided to hold a joint family part on the weekend between their graduations.

After talking to most of the VFW halls, Elks lodges, Sons of Columbus (halls? lodges?) and Sons of Italy venues in the South Shore area, we have made our selection:

The VFW Hall in Braintree

This is a shot of the front door:

And the side door:

The only thing that alarmed Andrew and I when we arrived at the hall this week to sign a contract was the serious lack of parking - it looked like at most, you could fit 15 people, which would be a problem when we're expecting around 80 guests.

This is why the next picture is important - it shows the bank's front parking lot next door which will hold all our overflow parking. Apparently, the VFW has an arrangement with the bank, and with our party falling on a Saturday afternoon/evening, we'll have no problems using their lot (both front and back).

Front lot (I think the customers thought I was casing the bank):

Dopey me forgot to take a picture of the actual party room inside the hall - oh well!

Now onto the fun part of planning - decorations, food and invitations!

St. Patrick's Day Oatmeal Whoopie Pies

You think with St. Patrick's Day, I would've been inspired to make something like Irish soda bread.

Nope, I went with Oatmeal Whoopie Pies simply because I was in the mood for them. I've been in search of a recipe that will make something that resembles the Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies. One of my coworkers in Decathlon used to have a great recipe that came close, but she refused to share the recipe. These aren't bad but I'll keep my eye open for another recipe.

Oatmeal Whoopie Pies

Oatmeal cookies

• 2 cups packed brown sugar
• 3/4 cup butter
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 tablespoons boiling water
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups quick cooking oats

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease baking sheets (I used my silpat sheet)

1. Cream butter with the brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs and mix well. Stir in the salt, cinnamon, baking powder, boiling water, baking soda and flour. Mix to combine. Stir in the oats.
2. Drop cookies onto the prepared baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 - 12 minutes. Let cookies cool and then make sandwiches from two cookies filled with Whoopie Pie Filling.

Whoopie Pie Filling

• 1 egg white
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups confectioner's sugar
• 3/4 cup shortening
• I added two drops of concentrated green food coloring

1. Beat the egg white.
2. Mix in the milk, vanilla and 1 cup of the confectioner's sugar.
3. Beat in the shortening and remaining cup of sugar and food coloring. Beat until light and fluffy.

I matched up the cookies into pairs on the basis of size and shape, and then piped on the filling using a freezer Ziploc bag with the corner snipped off:


I tried to leave a little space around the edge, knowing that once the second cookie got placed on top, the filling would spread:


Don't these look perfect for St. Patrick's Day after all?

An Unattended Camera...

...in my case - a camera left for two weeks at Amy's place - leads to mysterious pictures like these, which I found when the camera was returned to me tonight:

One More Picture...

Here's a shot of how charming Marliave looks from the outside - unless you knew where it was located, it would be easy to miss as it's tucked away down a little side street near Park Street. For those who live in Boston, it's on the same street that has Beantown Pub at the end.

Dinner at Marliave

It's Restaurant Week in Boston (technically two weeks). From March 15 - March 20 and March 22 - 27 (with some doing Saturday, March 21 as well), many upscale restaurants in Boston and the surrounding suburbs are offering special menus where you pay:

• $15.09 for 2-course light lunches (which means no dessert or no appetizer!)
• $20.09 3-course lunches
• $33.09 3-course dinners

I love Restaurant Week because it actually motivates me to go out in the cold weather and try a new restaurant that I've read about or heard about, but could never afford on a regular night. And I've got to give a special shout out to Underoo Elf for reminding me about this season's restaurant week last month, giving me plenty of time to make reservations at FOUR different restaurants.

Tonight was the start of Restaurant Week, and Andrew and I joined Amy, Phu and Pete at Marliave for a delicious dinner. We chose Marliave because it had one of the best menus for Restaurant Week - most places will only give you two or three choices for the appetizer, the entree and dessert. Not Marliave - they pretty much offered up their main menu, with tons to chose from.

Amy shows her happiness at seeing Marliave's huge Restaurant Week menu:

I show off my fancy drink - I couldn't remember the official name since it's not listed on their website but it was named after Marie Curie and had gin, St. Germaine (some sort of citrus liquor), grapefruit, I believe lime and prosecco, oddly garnished with a cucumber:

Andrew copied me and ordered the same drink:


Phu went off the Restaurant Week menu and ordered oysters in addition to his escargot appetizer:

Amy bravely tries her first oyster:

Gulp! She's just slid the oyster in her mouth - and like it enough to have another oyster:


My appetizer choice was a beet salad with mandarin oranges, pistachios, and goat cheese sandwiched between pieces of beet:


Amy chose the best appetizer - "rare bits" - which consisted of a gooey, fondue-like cheese concoction with bacon and garlic bread to dip it in:


The twins, so named for their outfits, appropriately ordered the same appetizer, the meatball sliders:


A shot of Phu's escargot:

My first taste of escargot - it was pretty tasty even though I was grossed out by how much it still retained the shape of a snail:

For the entrees:

• Pete ordered the hanger steak with gorgonzola butter and frites.
• Phu and Andrew ordered beef wellington.
• Amy ordered lobster fettucine.
• I ordered the yankee pot roast - it was tender and delicious:

For dessert, without being planned, we each ended up choosing one of the five desserts that was offered:

• Pete got the tiramisu
• Andrew got the flourless chocolate cake
• Phu got the formaggio (cheese plate) and got teased for the rest of the night for having ordered the lamest dessert
• I ordered the bread pudding with whiskey sauce and ice cream:

And Amy got the panna cotta with a balsamic reduction:

We rolled out of Marliave happy and stuffed, and glad that we didn't pay full price for our meals!

Italian Pizzelles

Several years ago, I splurged on a pizzelle iron. For those who've never heard of them, pizzelles are delicious Italian wafer cookies that traditionally are flavored with anise. I think the first time I had them was in Maryland when we were at one of my old BC roommate's grandparents' house.

Pizzelles came up in conversation at work last week which put me in the mood to put my fancy pizzelle iron to work.

The shiny exterior:


...and the beautiful interior:


Recipe for Traditional Italian Pizzelles

• 3 eggs, room temperature
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 butter or margarine, melted and cooled
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 tsp. anise
• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking powder

1. In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs and sugar.
2. Add the cooled butter or margarine, vanilla and anise.
3. Sift the flour and baking powder together and add to the egg mixture.
4. The batter should be stiff enough to dropped by spoon (I used my cookie scoop).

Placing the scoops can be tricky:

As you can see, if you put too much in the scoop or place it to close to an edge, there's some overflow.

I had a whole stack of pizzelles at the end:

I then switched to chocolate pizzelles (since Andrew doesn't like the anise flavor). The recipe is the same except you remove the anise flavoring, add three tablespoons of sugar and three tablespoons of cocoa powder. I threw in a few mini chocolate chips for good measure:

Which lead to another large stack of pizzelles:

The fun thing with pizzelles is that you can shape them into bowls or cones while they're still warm - so I formed two pizzelles into bowls, which would be perfect with a scoop of ice cream for dessert tonight:

Cabot's Ice Cream For Dessert

As I mentioned in my last post, a big dinner at Apgujung didn't stop us from hitting Cabot's for dessert.

Cabot's is a family-owned restaurant that reminds me of a diner. Andrew calls it a better Friendly's. I love it because not only does it feature homemade ice cream and ice cream cakes, it has a massive six page ice cream menu featuring all sorts of decadent ice cream parfaits, sundaes and desserts. Take a look for yourself. There's so much to choose from that it makes it extremely hard to make your mind up about what you want!

Amanda showed the most restraint out of the group and went with scoops of pistachio ice cream. Charlotte went with some sort of Coffee Toffee Sundae, with scoops of coffee ice cream topped with Cabot's famous hot fudge, toffee bits and whipped cream:



Andrew and Tom went with the Brazilian Combo, which consisted of coffee, maple nut, butter pecan and vanilla ice cream, topped with cold chocolate, coffee, rum flavored english toffee (like a yummy butterscotch) and maple nut toppings, whipped cream and a cherry. What they didn't realize when they ordered it was that the Brazilian Combo would come in a dish the size of a small boat!


Andrew shows his approval for the Brazilian Combo.

I had a hard time making up my mind and in the end, went with the classic Fudge-Anna sundae: Banana wheels, vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, whipped cream and a cherry. I'm the type of person that never gets hot fudge on their sundaes so the fact that I love Cabot's hot fudge shows you how good it is - you can tell from the pictures how thick it is, perfect for scraping off the sides of the glass with your spoon:


My sundae glass after I was finished with my attack:

We're So Stuffed!

I'm typing this after 9 pm with a very full belly. Andrew and I just returned from visiting two Newton favorites, Apgujung and Cabot's.

As Andrew's sister Amanda was in town for the weekend, she drove up with Andrew's parents Tom and Charlotte to have dinner with us. We headed to Apgujung, a Korean restaurant located around the corner from my place.

After placing our orders, the waitress brought us our banchan dishes, which consisted of kimchi, pickled radish and carrots, some sort of fish strips, cooked bean sprouts (one of my favorites) and what appeared to be coleslaw:



Charlotte gave kimchi a try and decided it wasn't to her liking. I'll freely admit that I wouldn't like kimchi if I didn't grow up with it. Andrew and Tom were the only ones at the table that were eating kimchi with me, as Andrew demonstrates below:



This came out a bit blurry but shows Charlotte and Tom getting their chopsticks ready for their barbecued meal - beef short rib and spicy pork, cooked at our table:



Amanda went with the sushi - From what I recall, she had some sort of tempura asparagus and cucumber roll, a king crab roll and a California roll. I had two of the asparagus rolls and they were tasty:


Andrew was excited to have beef bibimbap, even though I made him stop eating it to take a picture:

Here's Andrew mixing the layers of rice, meat and vegetables together in the bibimbap:

Charlotte and Tom caught on quickly to the technique of cooking their dinners at the table, although I must admit, the waitress and host were quick to jump in and help us cook our meat as well:

My meal of chicken katsu was the last to arrive at the table, and I was hungry enough to start eating it without taking a picture. So you get a shot of katsu after I was done eating it. Since they give such generous portions at Apgujung (two whole chicken katsu cutlets for me), I had plenty left over even after sharing it with everyone at the table:

I didn't check my watch but I think we easily spent two hours at Apgujung eating and talking. Whether it was coincidence or not, no one was seated at any of the tables around us even though the restaurant was packed, making me think we were one of the loudest ones there! It was laugh-out-loud fun hearing stories about Andrew, Amanda and Adam when they were young.

Sharing all of our dishes left us room for dessert, which worked out well since Andrew and I had been meaning to introduce the rest of his family to Cabot's. This visit deserves a post of its own!