Restaurant Wars 2013 - Panera

Restaurant Wars 2013 continues today with Panera!  The Boyfriend and I actually live within walking distance to the town Panera, which means we eat there at least once a week.  Usually in the winter, we eat there almost exclusively.  Mostly because it gets cold here in the winter and it's the closest restaurant to our apartment.  Seriously, it's better to walk there than it is to get in a cold car and drive anywhere else.

Spinach & Gorgonzola Cavatappi

Anesthesia is crazy.

I'm happy to be talking to you from the other side of my wisdom tooth extraction.  Though I hardly remember much of the procedure, or the two hours after it.  I'm thankful to have had an excellent oral surgeon.  After the initial jab of the needle and the anesthesia washing over me, I have felt very little pain.  It's been a generally good experience!  I'm now down four useless teeth and happy that I won't have to do it again.

The only problem I had with the extraction is the timing, which is totally my fault.  The dentist told me no spicy foods until I'm all healed up.  This would normally be fine, but I planned the surgery just before a visit to my parents in Buffalo.  I couldn't have a single hot wing the entire time I was home!  I was so disappointed and now I'm back in New Jersey with a healed mouth and no chicken wings!  I'll have to make some wing sauce this week.

Before my extraction I made this amazing pasta dish.  I have an all new love affair with panko breadcrumbs.  And deep frying them.  Then devouring them.  This dish was super easy too and ready in less than 30 minutes.  It also uses my favorite pasta shape - cavatappi!  If you can't find the fun little corkscrews, feel free to use any pasta with ridges.

Marinated Tomato Pasta with Gorgonzola

I'm finally back from our weeklong hiatus in the great white north.  No, not Canada.  Alaska!

Boyfriend and I spent a week among the seals, bears and whales, sailing the chilly Pacific on the Celebrity Infinity.  What can I say about Alaska?  It's just plain majestic.  We cruised by, hiked through and flew over some of the most beautiful landscapes that I have ever seen. 

Towering mountains with blue glaciers clinging to their sides.

Green hills, peeking through an early morning layer of clouds.

Huge boulders, floating on a river of flowing blue water and ice.

Our trip through Alaska was also one of the most active vacations we've taken.  Thankfully we had a day at sea to recover from all the activities.

Hiking...

Rock Climbing...

White Water Rafting...

I'm a little tired still.  That's why I went with a simple pasta dish from my new Alaskan cookbook, even though this dish seems like the least Alaskan dish I could find.  No salmon to be found!

But here's a bear...

And here's the pasta!

Gorgonzola and Leek Risotto

I'm counting down the days of work left this week.  Why do I only have three days left?  The reason is simple, come Friday at 8:00 am boyfriend and I will be winging our way to Seattle!  After a five hour flight from JFK to the west coast, we'll be heading to the port and boarding another cruise ship!

It's like 2012 is the year of the cruise vacation for us.  I'm thinking of booking us a Greek Isles cruise in the fall just to round out the year of sailing.  This time, boyfriend and I are heading north into the chilly waters off the coast of Alaska.  We will be floating through iceberg infested water, sailing with humpback whales and watching glaciers slowly creep toward the sea.  I'm looking forward to hearing my first glacier calf, does it really sound like thunder?

We are almost ready to go.  This weekend I went out and bought a winter coat.  With the blanket-jacket retired and sent to Goodwill and only my plum-colored wool coat hanging in the closet, I really needed something that would keep me warm and dry in the Alaskan summer.  While the middle of summer isn't the best time to search for a great winter jacket, I managed a great find at Century 21!  A sleek lime green, waterproof, hooded parka!

Now, if I could only decide what else to pack...

Gorgonzola Soup

Ever since the time I moved in with boyfriend, he has been asking me to make him gorgonzola cheese soup.  For months and months he has been giving me this idea, telling me to add it to the weeks menu.  I asked where this suggestion came from?  Boyfriend says he had a gorgonzola soup at a restaurant in Buffalo.

I asked "What else was in the soup?" 

The response I got was "I don't know, it had gorgonzola cheese!" 

"Well, was it a brothy soup or a creamy soup?"

"Creamy and cheesy!"

"Were there any vegetables in it?  What was the base of the soup?"

"I don't know, cheese?"

So, you can tell that boyfriend, while he enjoys a good soup, loves gorgonzola cheese.  He is also not one to taste the mild flavors in a meal.  Especially when cheese is involved.

I knew right from the start that this soup could not possibly be just broth and gorgonzola cheese.  That would be disgusting.  I knew that it had to have been a vegetable based soup, finished off with gorgonzola cheese.  Gorgonzola is a very pungent cheese and you don't need a lot of it for flavor.

I settled on a potato-leek soup base and finished it off with some caramelized pears.  The verdict?  The soup is just what boyfriend wanted.  I got back a bowl of caramelized pears, sitting in an otherwise empty bowl.  Someone doesn't like fruit.

Pasta with Gorgonzola Cream Sauce

What would you choose as your last meal?  Would it be a big, juicy steak with a heaping side of mashed potatoes?  Or maybe a creamy asparagus soup topped with crunchy croutons?  Perhaps you would go for a large cheese pizza with some chicken wings.  Thinking back, I wish I had gone for the pizza and wings, but no, this was my last meal.

No, I'm not dying, but I won't be eating chicken wings any time soon.  Yesterday evening I journeyed to the orthodontists office and had my brand new braces affixed to my teeth.  Yep, I'm thirty years old and I just got my first ever set of braces.

I always thought that I needed that I needed braces when I was little.  It's not that my teeth are crazy out of place, they just need a little rearranging.  When I was in middle school, everyone had braces, it was not uncommon for half of the people sitting at your lunch table to have them.  I was even a little jealous of this one girls braces, I liked the way she talked with them on her teeth.

When I went to my new New Jersey dentist this past fall, he told me something that I didn't really want to hear, that I would need to wear braces for at least a year.  I had just turned thirty the day before and this was not quite the birthday present that I was hoping for.  I made appointments with local orthodontists and went over my options.  In the end, I told myself that 18-24 months in braces was a small time in comparison to the rest of my life with straight teeth, so I scheduled my appointment. 

Tuesday night I cooked boyfriend and I a lovely Valentine's day meal, pasta smothered in a creamy sauce along with crusty bread and a chocolatey dessert.  This would be my last real meal until my braces come off.

Now, with my new ice-clear braces adhered to my teeth, I dust off my smoothie cookbooks, buy cans of oatmeal and jars of arborio rice.  I'm ready to perfect my egg-making skills and become an expert in panna cotta preparation.  I'm also reaching out to all of you, you former wearers of braces, for your favorite food options!  Help me out in my time of need!

Gorgonzola Pasta

Hey everyone, I hope that you had a great week!  I can't believe that it's already August!  This last month has brought a lot of change and I'm starting to settle into my new routine.  I've been working at my new job for a month now and I'm loving it.  It's totally different from graduate school and my postdoctoral position, but in many great ways.  I'll tell you more about that next week!

You also know that I've moved in with boyfriend and that I've been getting used to living with a boy (eeewww!  Boys!) and learning his finicky palate.  Boys and girls definitely have different likes and dislikes when it comes to food!  I'm working on finding that happy medium between our two menus.  The main issue being that boyfriend loves all things pasta and I love fitting into my pants.

Another big change happened last week with this loss of our family dog, Zoe.  I realize that this was a bigger change for my parents, who lived with Zoe, but she was still my buddy.  But if you scroll down, you'll notice some pretty little ladies.  I want you to meet Bella and Izzie! 

They joined the Wilde parent household this week to try and fill that big hole left behind from Zoe.  According to my parents, they are crazy.  All I know is that they are super adorable and I want to go home and play with them.