And The Award Goes To…

I’m kind of over the Oscars right now. I watched a little bit and then realized I had a blog to write, fish guts to wash out of my chef gear (more on that later), and some other important stuff to attend to (more on that as well…). Actually, let’s start with the EXCITING part and then move on to the weekend.

FIRST- If you watch Top Chef, you’ve probably heard about the Quaker Oats Quickfire Challenge. Basically you submit a recipe featuring Quaker Oats (and come on, who doesn’t love them some oats?) and you could win a trip to NYC to compete in the first ever televised Quaker Oats Viewer Quickfire Challenge… AND possibly attend a future Top Chef episode. Interested?? Details here. I know how talented all of you are, so no excuses! Get those recipes in ASAP. The deadline is THIS FRIDAY by midnight.

SECOND (yes, there’s more!)- Tomorrow at 1:30 I will be interviewing STEPHANIE IZARD, winner of Top Chef season 4!!!!

I don’t know about you guys, but our household was super excited when Stephanie won last season. She’s kind of a badass. So I need your help… tonight’s survey question is:

What question would you ask Stephanie?

Like I said, the interview is tomorrow- but if you get your questions in early enough (before 1:00 CST), I’ll try to include them!

Back to the weekend…

*FRIDAY*

As reported, Friday was Fish Day in advanced food prep. I am officially not a fan of Fish Day. First I had to scale and filet this:

It was a total disaster. That poor little tilapia. Moving on…

The one good part of Fish Day was this Salmon en Papillot:

We placed salmon filets over a bed of veggies (carrots and red peppers), and topped with lemon slices, shallots, salt, pepper, rosemary and more vegetables, then wrapped the whole thing in a little parchment “heart”. After searing the sealed parchment packet on the stove for a few minutes, we put the whole thing in the oven for another 5 min or so- until the paper is puffed and brown.

*SATURDAY*

First up was an early a.m. 8 mile run, followed by Mr. Gabriel’s first birthday party. The very serious birthday boy:

The theme was “Puppy Party”… Brian loved his ears:

We also drove out to Southlake to visit Brian’s parents, sister, brother-in-law and nieces. Very fun and lots of Guitar Hero.

For dinner we headed to one of our favorite restaurants, Blue Mesa. It was packed and we were seated at a horrible table. Maybe I’m a total brat about this, but I HATE being seated next to the kitchen. This table probably shouldn’t have been placed where it was in the first place… I felt like we were in the way the entire time and probably should have just requested another table- but by this time we had already waited for 20 minutes and were starving. But enough whining; the food was great, as usual.

My Blue Crab and Shrimp Enchiladas with black beans and rice:

These Sweet Potato Fries will be the death of me.

*SUNDAY*

I slept SO LATE this morning. I’m not even going to say what time Chloe and I got up, because it’s borderline embarassing. But sweet Brian made us breakfast! Eggs (poached very impressively, I might add), homemade biscuits and turkey bacon.

Apparently he thinks I eat a lot (true)… and that I REALLY like biscuits (also true). He even made me a flower-shaped biscuit with a cookie cutter.

Awww.

This afternoon I threw a pot roast in the crock pot and then met the lovely Ange for yogurt at Yogilicious in Uptown. She lent me a fabulous cookbook months and months ago and I’ve been holding it hostage ever since.

Green tea and taro yogurt (in pink and green, my wedding colors- hey, it was 2005) with mango, blackberries and kiwi:

The pot roast turned out great. I used this Paul Deen recipe and threw in some yukon gold potatoes and baby portabella mushrooms. My mom used to make roast on Sundays and it always made the house smell SO good. This was a nice little reminder of that.

And lest you think my meal was too “brown” (*ahem* SUSAN), a spinach salad with Newman’s Own Balsamic:

That’s all I got for ya’- hope everyone had a great weekend!