Wilde Week #8

1. Three books this week! Mostly because I neglected to tell you about my book of the week last week. They are all pretty quick reads, so load one onto your kindle and cozy up with a hot drink.

Book 1 - Culinary Reactions - The Everyday Chemistry of Cooking by Simon Quellen Field.  I was so disappointed in this book.  I got this book as a Christmas present and have been waiting to read it.  I thought it would be fun and interesting to learn the science behind cooking and baking.  Sadly, I'm not quite sure who this book was written for.  For someone with a PhD in organic chemistry, this book was a bit too simplistic.  For someone with no chemistry background, this book is too complex.

Book 2 - Bonjour 40 by Karen A. Chase.  Another blog turned book, but I really enjoyed this one.  It made me want to travel to Paris again, but stay for a month of my own.  I do this a lot with travel essays.  They give me wanderlust and I find myself looking at flights on kayak for the next week.

Book 3 - before i fall by Lauren Oliver.  Yes, I have a problem and I love reading teen lit.  Don't judge.  A story about a mean high school girl who dies in a car accident, but that's just chapter one.  Then the day happens again.  This book is probably a great read for any high school student to help them reflect on bullying and how they treat people around them.  Personally, it depressed me and made me not want to have kids that grow up into teenagers.  Great story though, I'd totally recommend it.

2. This Friday at work we had our annual Pub Quiz. Although due to new company rules, it was an alcohol free pub quiz, which I think is just called trivia. Nonetheless, I'm apparently stupid. No really, I thought I knew random things? Nope, I'm a big ole dummy. You want to know which question I got right? Name one president, other than Lincoln or Kennedy, that has been assassinated. McKinley. Boom, I know stuff. The other thirty-nine questions? Yeah, I'm gonna pass on those.

3. I should also confess that I regularly play trivia with BF... We spend most Friday nights out at dinner, playing Sporcle on the iPad. Want to waste a few hours of your life, testing your general knowledge of useless things? Go here, you'll totally be sucked in. Don't say I didn't warn you.  Still, this weekly trivia did not help me at work.
4. Marathon training continues around here. This week I was on my own an in the gym because 1. BF had major work this week and couldn't come with and 2. It's been cold out. So far this week I've run ten miles with my big six mile run coming up later today! I'm thinking I need to get some new running shoes. Hot pink ones, like this. I will look really fast in them.

5. Can you believe that next week is the season finale for Pretty Little Liars? I feel like it just started back up a few weeks ago! And there has been so much going on this season, I'm so glad that I'm not one of these girls. My high school life was comparably boring! Don't watch PLL? You should. It's silly and suspenseful and dramatic and I want to dress like these girls, even though I'm 31.

6. I think I'm obsessed with marshmallow treats. I made a batch last week with biscoff. This week I turned a box of Lucky Charms into squares. Now I'm thinking of taking these freeze-dried raspberries and mixing them with marshmallow and cereal. Help me! I have a marshmallow addiction!

7. Nail polish of the week? I'm a little boring this week. I'm sporting haymarket by nails inc. LONDON under a layer of beyond cozy sparkle polish by essie.  My nails are so sparkly!

8. Are you ready for St Patricks day?  If not, head here, here or here and get inspired!  I'm going to put on my green pants and maybe make some more Lucky Charms treats!

Happy St. Patricks Day!

I usually don't do holiday posts, but I had to make these.  I don't really celebrate St. Patricks day in the traditional sense either.  You know, the whole - wear green, drink a copious amount of green liquor and stumble home in the early hours of March 18th.  It's not really my thing.  What I do love to do is coat cereal in marshmallows.  Then dunk the results in $10/pound Belgian white chocolate, you know, to class them up a bit.  After I tinted the fancy, Belgian white chocolate green.  They're super classy marshmallow treats.  Go make them and celebrate like the Irish cereal-promoting leprechauns celebrate March 17th.

Lucky Charms Marshmallow Treats

6 cups Lucky Charms Cereal

1 10-ounce bag Jet-puffed marshmallows

4 tablespoons butter

1/2 pound white chocolate

Green food coloring

Melt butter in a large pot.  Add marshmallows and stir until melted.  Add Lucky Charms and stir to coat. 

Coat a 9x13-inch pan with cooking spray.  Pour marshmallowy cereal into the pan.  Coat your hands with cooking spray and gently press marshmallowy cereal into the pan.  Let set for at least 4 hours. 

Turn pan upsidedown to release marshmallow treats.  Cut into reasonable sized bars.  Melt white chocolate in a bowl set over simmering water (or in the microwave).  Add a few drops green food coloring and stir until evenly colored. 

Dunk cereal treats in the chocolate and place on wax paper to set up and harden the chocolate.

Restaurant Wars - Red Lobster

I have two complaints when it comes to Red Lobster.  First, the wait.  I have never once walked into this restaurant and gotten a table right away.  It could be three o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon and you could walk in to find a forty minute wait.  Second, the service.  I'm sure it stems from the really long wait and all the people wanting to sit down and eat, but the service you get is more along the lines of - sit down, eat your food and get out.  Red Lobster isn't the European, sit as long as you'd like, linger over a cup of coffee and dessert, kind of place.  Don't take your time, eat your food and give up that table!

The reason we come to RL?  The cheddar bay biscuits of course.  Isn't that why everyone goes there?  That and I don't cook a lot of fish at home because someone won't eat it.  Eating out is the best way for me to get my lobster, fish and shellfish fix.  When ordering out, I get to order the shmorgasboard of shrimp, lobster and fish meal! 

So after waiting almost fifty minutes for our table, Boyfriend and I ordered.  He got his favorite chicken linguine dish and I loaded up on broiled fish and shellfish.  I was trying to order something that wasn't super greasy, apparently broiling also requires heaps of butter, because my dinner was still floating in oil.  To was Boyfriends pasta, but that's just the way he likes it.  We ate lots of cheesey biscuits and had almost all of our dinners to take home.

For our Red Lobster dinner at home, I had to split it into two nights.  There was no way that I could make a pasta dinner and a fish and shrimp dinner at the same time.  As much as I would like to tell you that Boyfriend helps out in the kitchen, his kitchen skills begin and end at heating.  He's had a few culinary masterpieces, but for the most part he's a prepared food preparer. 

Sunday night we had spicy chicken linguine with my own take on cheddar bay biscuits.  Monday night I threw some chicken in the fridge for Boyfriend while I prepared myself some lemon tilapia and shrimp scampi.  I'm in love with the way the chicken and pasta turned out.  It was much lighter than the restaurant meal, but so full of flavor.  It's perhaps because I used an aged parmesan cheese that was amazing.  I wanted to eat it by the chunk.

Monday nights fish dinner was a little tricky to pull together, mostly because fish cooks so fast.  The fish was ready to go much faster than the shrimp and I wasn't ready to juggle all these things (I was also preparing broccoli, stuffing and Boyfriends chicken!).  The shrimp scampi was much lighter than what I got at the restaurant, mostly because I cooked the shrimp in half butter/half olive oil.  My tilapia was simply cooked in a little butter and spritzed with some lemon.  Simple and delicious.

If you only make one thing from this post, make the biscuits!  Oh man, I think I ate four or five of these Sunday night.  I totally deserved it after that long, four-mile run.  There are many recipes for these biscuits online, but they almost all utilize Bisquick.  I was looking to make them entirely from scratch.  With a little tweaking, I think what I came out with was amazing.  If you aren't a salt freak like I am, maybe cut the garlic salt in half.