Restaurant Week aka Dine Out Boston

In case you didn't know, I live in Boston. I moved here a little over a year ago (and by a little I mean one year and one week, but who's counting?) and have been so excited by all there is to do here. One of the first things I did with my new coworkers was go out to dinner during Boston's restaurant week to Capital Grille. I previously lived in Hartford and restaurant week happened semi-regularly among some of the top restaurants in the area. I knew those places by heart!

Boston, however, has a much larger array of restaurants participating. This year, they have also changed their pricing schema so instead of a fixed price across restaurants, the price varies slightly by restaurant. Even though the menu is somewhat fixed, it's a great chance to experience fancier cuisine you might otherwise pass up. Here are the top places I want to explore!

Boston Chops

I came across this restaurant while researching restaurants on Instagram for another article. While they don't appear to have an Instagram account themselves, so many people hashtagged them that they came up in my search. It sounds like the special in steak, something that has been seriously lacking in my life, but they also have a variety of options on their menu.

Taken from their website menu, this looks good enough to eat!

Marliave

This place has a nice 1920's vibe with black and white tile throughout so of course I'm attracted to this location. I've been here for lunch before and ate waaaay too many truffle fries but I would be interested in checking out their dinner menu. The last time I went there for dinner, the wait was too long so I ended up around the corner at J.M. Curley's (also an excellent place, get the whiskey smash!). My guess is this place will be hoppin' for restaurant week but here's hoping!

Del Frisco's

After joining a local blogger group, I've had the opportunity to attend a lot of foodie events in the area and meet some great ladies! One of the events I missed was a brunch at Del Frisco's but boy did I see and hear all about it afterwards! Pictures and posts of delicious foods cropped up all over my newsfeeds and now I'm extremely tempted to check them out. They also have a great gluten-free menu, check out Gluten Free Boston's Girl's review!

This is actually a photo from a brunch attended by Gluten Free Boston Girl, sorry I missed it!

Melting Pot

My roommate has a fondue pot and I know she loves cheese, as do I, but we have yet to bust it out. Like I said, one year, one week and counting. I haven't had fondue as a meal before and the thought of dipping things in cheese for dinner sounds delicious. And messy, definitely messy. Personally I hope there's chocolate fondue for dessert.

Top of the Hub

On top of its ridiculous view and ridiculous mojitos, Top of the Hub's food has always looked amazing as it passes me by to more fortunate patrons. This is the place you take your parents and friends who are visiting from out of town to get a taste of how beautiful Boston is from the sky and to enjoy jazz music while sipping cocktails. It's fancy, we're usually under-dressed but they let us in anyways. Based on the level of fancy and their drink prices, this is one of those culinary dream restaurants where I would never spend so much money on dinner but since it's participating in restaurant week, why not? Maybe I can squeeze in a lunch there, see the city in the daylight for once--maybe.

Ummm, yes please

Union Bar & Grille

Another Instagram research find, this place looks like it has more than just burgers. Their website homepage alone has a collage of options that tempt me. A picture's worth a thousand words and they have a dozen of them so that's a lot of words and a lot of salivating by yours truly.

The homepage has a collage of menu options but this setting looks amazing!

There are more restaurants participating than just these ones and you can view their full menu on restaurant week's website. While it doesn't run on the weekends, lunch and dinner options will be available from March 16th-21st and 23rd-28th. What places are you most interested in exploring? Any recommendations? Leave a comment!

The Simple Things

Let's get real about Sundays. It's a day to sleep in but not too much or you won't be able to sleep that night, leaving you tired for the Monday workday and it's a day to relax but not too much or you'll get the Sunday night jitters about forgetting to do something for the next day. So basically it's a day of balance where you have to be productive but not too productive or it negates the day of rest.

My Sundays usually start with a mid-day brunch, whether that's with friends or with my cat, breakfast and coffee are a must. Single Lady pancakes are my favorite solo brunch food since it's perfectly portioned and doesn't make a mess. If I could find a Single Lady waffle recipe, that would be a thing (note to self: invent a Single Lady waffle recipe. Make bank.). And there is always coffee. Coffee and brunch are consumed while watching ridiculous Sunday morning television like Say Yes to the Dress or movie reruns that I've seen a thousand times. It makes it easier to get up and get going if I'm not overly invested in a show. Because let's be real: the last two Sundays I've spent re-watching seasons 1 and 2 of Downton Abbey. For reals.

Jalapeno and corn pancakes. Amazing!

The relevant part of this post comes when it's time to do the grocery shopping and food prep. Tracy Shutterbean seems to have this process locked down and I'm inspired by her dedication to meal prep for her upcoming week. I go so far as to make my dinners and brainstorm lunches beyond the typical salad. Last week's lunch was the spicy chili (which is wildly popular on this blog apparently, thanks for reading!) and I've used chili and soup before as a salad substitute. I know it sounds simple but I do take into consideration what I have going on that week. Am I getting dinner with a friend? Is work providing me dinner some nights (yes)? I don't want to waste food or over-stock my fridge so sometimes I'll make two dishes and sometimes I'll make three depending on how bland my life is at the time.

This week, I thawed some leftover beef stew to pair with rice and bought some chicken to cook up a stir fry with some vegetables I already had leftover from the chili. That's the other planning part, determining what I have in the fridge that is going to go bad. Historically speaking, I'm terrible at cooking rice. Everyone told me to just get a rice cooker but I was resistant because it was another gadget that would take up space in my kitchen. Then I learned how to make fish curry and even my friend's Indian mom told me to get a rice cooker. So I did. And it's amazingly simple and always makes a mess but it's a great way to multi-task meal prep. While the rice cooked all on its own at one end of the counter, I prepared the stir fry. Stir fry is not going to take very long so I waited a bit to start cooking to give the rice a head start. I still ended up waiting for the rice but oh well.

Allow chicken to marinade for 10-15 minutes

Chicken tenders are cut into bite-sized portions and left to marinade in Soy Vay's teriyaki sauce. It's a favorite of mine and works great with chicken and salmon. Plus it's a clever name. While the chicken was marinading, I chopped up some carrots and bell peppers (I guarantee there was raw chicken transferred to the vegetables but I decided everything was getting cooked anyways). Carrots and chicken will take longer to cook so I tossed them in the  pan first. The marinade from the chicken also gets into the vegetables for extra flavoring.

So colorful!

Before adding the peppers, I steamed some frozen edamame in the microwave. I looked everywhere for the edamame without the shells but couldn't find it or I would have added it directly to the pan. As it were, I cooked the edamame and then shelled it into the stir fry at the end (which took awhile btw). The peppers and edamame are added once the chicken is almost cooked, essentially after you have browned it for a few minutes. I let the whole thing simmer while I waited for the rice to cook. Once everything was done, I spooned a scoop of rice into a bowl and added the vegetables. Voila! Easy dinner plus extra rice for the already existing left-overs. This could easily be lunch or dinner.

But for lunch this week, we're talking salad. For Galentine's Day, my friend Lisa brought over a salad that was ridiculously delicious and equally simple. There was no dressing required as the fixings were flavorful enough. It's simply spinach, chopped pears, dried cranberries, feta cheese (or bleu cheese) and pecans. Or at least that's what I ended up making. I bought a box of spinach (they were out of bags) and just mixed all the ingredients together to have a ready-made tupperware of salad that I could portion out for lunch.

The Lisa Salad

One hour of prep work later and I am set for the week. When I'm motivated and somewhat ambitious, I also bake on Sundays but recently there has been less baking and more cooking. However, Joy the Baker's pecan scones might bring me around next weekend! Here's to planning ahead!

Spicy Beef Chili

I don't know about you, readers, but I've got the winter blues. I love the snow, I love when it's snowing, I loved the movie Frozen but I am tired of relying on soup for warmth. I've made a lot of soup these days and I think I've run out of vegetables I liked to puree (I'm open to suggestions but just know that celery soup does not appeal to me in the least). What's a girl to do but make stews and chili. Chili is a classic!

Christmas colored peppers

In alignment with the Super Bowl, many areas have Souper Bowl chili cook-offs. I have no idea where this tradition stems from but it's okay by me! I attended a couple of these contests but didn't enter (this year anyways). I was inspired by the 40+ varieties that were at one competition, there were so many different ones that by the time we reached the end, it was difficult to remember what was what. There's a psychological principle at work here where we remember the beginning and the end but not the middle. Sorry middle numbers, you got the short straw. There were some chilis that were way too spicy for me, it instantly burned my taste buds off and left my mouth tasting like metal. And then there were some that were so sweet, they tasted like brown sugar but with the consistency of meat. I felt like Goldie Locks with a spoon instead of a chair.

Nearly 40 varieties

So I set out in search of a nice and easy chili recipe that was simple for my first chili attempt. I found a recipe on Food52 and was intrigued that it used sweet elements like dark chocolate and brown sugar but also called for some heat. I took a little risk and erred on the side of more jalapeno than less but then again, I also erred on the side of more chocolate.

Just a little bit of sweet for the spicy

After chopping the onion, I browned the beef and onions together while chopping the remaining vegetables. I added mushrooms to the recipe since I had them in my refrigerator from last week's mac and cheese adventure. Pasta sauce tastes pretty good with mushrooms so it made sense to add them. Once the beef was browned, all the ingredients get dumped into the pot. I ended up leaving the crushed tomatoes out of the recipe. I added the can of black beans with the juices intact so it was already looking like a good consistency and I was worried that the crushed tomatoes would make it too soupy.

One pot of ingredients for easy clean up

While everything simmered together, I whipped up a batch of cookies. Just call me June Cleaver. The chili stewed for about 40-45 minutes before I tested a bite. This has just enough heat that by the end of the serving, you're sweating a bit but if you add a helping of cheese and sour cream, it evens right out. You can definitely taste the sweet in there with a hint of chocolate before the bite of the jalapeno.

I am quite the cookie monster!

Being a one pot recipe, the cleanup was easy! My favorite recipes are those that require both fresh and canned items because the prep and cleanup is nice and fast. The cookies also turned out deliciously but apparently are too exotic for children. The kids I shared them with drooled all over them before deciding they didn't like them. It was only two cookies, but that's two more I could have eaten to make a perfect dozen consumed my yours truly. Just call me Cookie Monster--June "The Cookie Monster" Cleaver. Thaaaat's me!

The final product with the cooling benefits of sour cream and cheese

 Recipe adapted from One-Pot Chocolate Beef Chili on Food52

• 2 lbs. ground beef
• 1 onion
• 1-2 bell peppers
• 1/2 cup of carrots
• 1 stalk of celery  
• Mushrooms or other vegetables you desire 
• 1 14 oz. can of diced tomatoes
• 1 14 oz. can of black beans
• 1-2 jalapeno peppers
• 2-3 teaspoons of chili powder
• 1 teaspoon of cumin 
• 1/4 cup of dark chocolate
• 2-3 Tablespoons of brown sugar

1. Combine ground beef and chopped onion in one pot and cook until the beef is browned.
2. Chop the vegetables and add them to the beef along with all other ingredients to the pot and stir.
3. Cover mixture and simmer mixture for 45 minutes or until all flavors are mixed well. 
4. You can add crushed tomatoes to make it more liquidy but I prefer to leave it as meaty as possible.
5. Serve with cheese and sour cream as desired. 

Galentine's Day

I am not a fan of Valentine's Day, I haven't liked the holiday since I was about 7 years old. And before you think I'm a bitter cat lady in the making, hear me out. From the ages 8 to 13, I was violently ill on Valentine's Day. Usually it was just for the day itself, not leading up to it, not the day after but just the holiday. At some point, I realized this was probably a sign of things to come. Eventually, I grew out of being ill but I'm always worried the 14th will bring on a bout of 24 hours illness so try to avoid the holiday altogether. I have had exactly two dates for Valentine's Day and yes, I liked getting flowers but otherwise, it was pretty anticlimactic to have a date for the occasion.

Tulips are just as red and lovely as roses and not cliche

So this year, to curb my fear of sickness and also gagging at all the hearts and poems, I planned a dinner. Hurray entertaining and hurray for the trending #galentines pun. On top of the usual romantic posts all over the internet, sarcastic Valentines were a thing this year which I find utterly hilarious. If I had been a little more successful in planning, these would have been placecards with a card for each guest. I drafted the menu with classy comfort food in mind and no cliches. The pasta dish of choice was originally a creamy Alfredo dish from Smitten Kitchen but was swapped for Joy the Baker and the Pioneer Woman's mac and cheese, per the request of my roommate. I'm all for cheesy goodness that I can make a couple days ahead so the main dish was chosen.

Sneak preview!

The mac and cheese can be made ahead of time, so when I got home from work, I just had to add some bread crumbs on top and pop it in the oven. The recipe calls for cremini mushrooms but I don't know what those are so I just used plain mushrooms from the produce aisle. Picking the cheeses for the sauce was very exciting because I love cheese and it gave me an excuse to read all of the labels in the cheese aisle. Also you only need some of the chunks of cheese for the sauce so you have the rest of the cheddar and gruyere for snacking and appetizers.

So much cheesy goodness

For dessert, I waffled between making something with chocolate like silky chocolate pie or chocolate covered strawberries and something new and a bit lighter. I poured over my many cookbooks and chose poached pears from Pippa Middleton's book Celebrate (yes, you can judge me for a few seconds and then move on because it's fun to pretend to be British and rich and social).

The main ingredients for poached pears, besides pears

Poached pears were a new adventure as was purchasing port (purchasing port for poached pears, say that five times fast). I have never had port before and I thought it was pretty telling that the bottle in the store was covered in dust. It's not an expensive buy and you only use a portion of the bottle. I felt like I was making potpourri while adding the spices and orange peel to the pot of bubbling wine and port, ultimately placing the pears in to soak up the flavors. The part of this recipe that didn't go well was once the pears turn purple, you are meant to remove them and continue boiling the liquid to make it into a syrupy sauce. Syrup did not happen, it just stayed soupy. The pears were still delicious but I bought ice cream just in case as a pear-ing but didn't end up using that either. They were a little slippery to eat with a spoon so we just used our fingers, in true lady-like fashion.

It's like a pear hot tub in here

Now, on top of the mac and cheese and delicious desserts, there were brownies and cupcakes at work on Friday. One of my coworkers got cupcakes from my favorite shop, Georgetown Cupcakes (check out my top rankings here!) so of course I partook. She also recognized me from Twitter and asked if I was LivinLemon, the first time anyone has called me by my blogger name. It was a moment and worth a toast of champagne!

The final compilation 

 Poached Pears adapted from Pippa Middleton

• 8 pears
• Peels and juice from 2 oranges
• Assorted spice such as cloves, all-spice, or anise (original recipe calls for 4 whole-star anise but I improvised with cloves and all-spice in random measurements)
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 2 split vanilla beans (or a dash of vanilla if you're like me and don't have the beans)
• 1 bottle of red wine
• 1 1/4 cups of port
• 1 1/4 cup of sugar
• 4 Tablespoons of honey

1. Combine all ingredients except the pears in a large saucepan. Heat the wine, port, sugar and spice mixture until the sugar has all dissolved. 
2. Peel the pears while keeping the stems intact and place them upright in the pan, submerging them in the wine. 
3. Cover the pot and simmer for 25-30 minutes until they are purple in color. 
4. Leave the pears in the liquid for another hour before transferring to serving bowl. 
5. Bring the liquid back to a boil and simmer for 15-20 minutes until syrupy (good luck). Alternatively, spoon the liquid over the pears, even if syrup consistency is not achieved. 

Note: The pears can be made 1-2 days in advanced if stored away from the liquid. You can also garnish with whipped cream or ice cream if desired. 

Bold Brownies & Resolutions

I'm a little late on the New Year's resolution train. New Year's was not all that great, it kinda gets bucketed into the December mayhem. So I'm celebrating my own darn New Year as one year since I made my big life move to a new city. It was Valentine's Day 2013 that I broke up with my first post-collegiate job and found a new apartment (and awesome roommate). Right around that time, "This Girl Is On Fire" was super popular and it was my theme song. I saw this shirt that said "Every Thing Will Be Amazing" and it was. It was a great time for growth and change and it was awesome. And then the year kind of fizzled out in the end so I'm reflecting on my one year anniversary of making a really good life choice. And remembering the good times before the rough, it happens, it's life.

Old Navy had it right

It's taken me some time to figure out this year's motto and theme song (I swear, I don't always do that but it seems appropriate) and generally set a course for 2014. It helps to have goals, even if they aren't concrete or resolute like "give up mac and cheese" (as if). This year's theme song is a tie between Katy Perry's "Roar" and Sarah Bareilles's "Brave"--because they sound super similar but instead of being brave, I want to be bold. I think that's better than being brave, it's like a combination of bravery and additional strength.

Joy the Baker went to Uganda last week (say whaaaaat?!) and she wrote this amazing post about how we can have so much to share with so little. Meaning, we can make so much impact on the world, someone else's or our own, by just being ourselves and being good people. You'd think it was a given to be a good person but really it's not. If you're questioning if you're a good person, then you probably are because you're worried about it.

I saw this on Facebook as part of an ad or article. But I love it. 

So back to New Year's resolutions, be bold. Be adventurous and don't back away because it seems too hard or like too much of a long shot or you might fail. If there's one thing I learned in 2013 it's that nothing will change if you don't try something different and it's all about how you look at things. There are tough things in life and there are almost always worse things out there. Okay, end motivational speech.

Pour some sugar on that

If all else fails, make some brownies! I have a friend who has an unhealthy love of brownies. He makes a box of brownies a week, and eats them, no joke. Of course he's also one of those people you love to hate for having a ridiculous metabolism (and an equally unhealthy addiction to the gym). So for his birthday, I sent him homemade brownies and test new recipes on him. Enter the Pioneer Woman with an Instagram photo of delicious brownies.

Well done

Now, we have established that I have restocked my pantry with chocolate chips and all other forms of chocolate. One of my favorite things about homemade brownies is you melt chocolate and butter together in one pan. If it wasn't unsweetened chocolate, I would stick a spoon in this and eat it as is. But, as it were, chocolate tastes a lot better with sugar. So I restrained myself until I could mix the other good ingredients in there. Pioneer Woman said to use dark chocolate chips but I only had semisweet ones so was going to go all rouge. But between reading this recipe at work and getting home, she magically managed to make another batch and modified her recipe to use semisweet chips. So much for being a rebel!

I may have added slightly more chocolate chips

I like my brownies gooey and these promised to fulfill that need. Naturally, I was going to test the brownies before shipping them across the country. So I cut the center out of the brownie pan and they were very gooey, to the point that I was pretty sure they were still raw. The oven got fired back up and I tried cooking them longer but still pretty squishy. The recipe did say that you should let these set overnight and it was right! Hey all, you should let the brownies set overnight.

Ready for the oven--or my mouth

Now I'm really craving brownies but I'll have to settle for hot chocolate because winter never ends. But there is always another blog post to be written and work to be done. More to come!

More desserts, more dessert plates!

Ingredients

• 2 sticks (1 cup) of Unsalted Butter
• 5 ounces Unsweetened Chocolate
• 1/4 cup Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
• 2 cups Sugar
• 1 Tablespoon Vanilla
• 3 Large Eggs
• 1 1/4 cup Flour
• 3/4 cups Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips (or 1 cup...)

Recipe

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a medium saucepan, melt the butter with the unsweetened chocolate over low heat, whisking occasionally until smooth and melted. Add in the unsweetened cocoa powder and whisk to combine.
3. Remove the pan from heat and allow to cool for about 5 minutes.
4. Stir in sugar and vanilla until combined.
5. Add in the eggs, one at a time.
6. Stir in the flour until mostly incorporated. At this point, I switched from a whisk to a rubber spatula and folded in the flour.
7. Add the chocolate chips and fold until combined.
8. Pour batter into a greased 8 x 8 baking pan. For thinner brownies, use a 9x13 pan (and then be ashamed for making them flat). Even out the top and place in the oven.
9. Bake for 40 minutes, then check the brownies with a toothpick. If it is overly gooey/messy, continue baking for 5-10 minute intervals until cooked to desired consistency (and not raw).
10. Allow to cool completely. No for real, this is a crucial step. Do as I say, not as I do. 
11. Cut out the center piece and enjoy!