Hows my little kitchen rat?

Last Sunday I really felt like doing some sort of cooking activity that kept us busy all day. I came up with an idea of soup in a bread bowl. This was appropriate because we have resolved to make more soup and more bread, perfect! I started off the day by making some hockey pucks posing as cupcakes, which I thought were muffins until I found there was a icing recipe. They tasted alright but they didn't make the good breakfast that I was expecting with muffins.

The rest of the day we spent making our soup and bread bowls, in traditional fashion I failed on the bread bowls and Laura's soup shined brightly.

 We waited for a good two hours for the bread to rise and all it really did was spread out, sort of a let down considering we were making bowls. As I typed this I'm thinking maybe we should have put them in bowls to rise. Eventually I thought that they would rise in the oven like a cake, cupcake, or muffin even but instead we ended up with four bread scones.

Laura was the soup lady and she made us a tasty tomato soup from scratch. It was really cool because it tasted just like the soup from a can, but way tasty and easy! I think we will be making it again.

 The bread ended up being really tasty and and we learned that when using wheat flour one needs to add gluten to the mix for better results. Next time!

While we were waiting on the bread we also broke out our pasta roller and got our noodle on. Its a pretty neat process so I figured my fine followers would like to see it. We made some very not spinachy noodles, but they were green.

 It starts as a chunk of noodle bread, and gets flattened by our flattening device.

 We learned after our first time that you need to separate the noodles and liberally apply flour to keep them from fusing back together.

 Our instructions say, build the noodles into nests and freeze. This was our interpretation of that.

Laura made us a yummy sausage meal to accompany our noodles on a different day.

MMM!

Hows my little Bostonian?

 

Well friends, another weekend and another pin in our map! This pin belongs in the wonderful city of Boston Massachusetts. I think I can safely say, I love Boston. A couple of weeks ago I found a killer deal for two tickets from Chicago to Boston for $250 round-trip. A frenzy of phone calls and excitement led to a booking and a new adventure to visit my long lost friend Sarah Fuller and her wonderful dude John.

The trip started on a really exciting note, on our drive up to Chicago I smashed my car into a HUGE! deer carcass. Somehow because of a crazy combination of lighting and hill we didn't see it until we were basically on top of it. SMASH! After a lot of fur, blood, carnage, and a lost license plate we drove home and switched cars to continue our adventure. We had to, mine stunk so bad we could hardly stand it.

We arrived the following afternoon and started adventuring immediately. We were introduced to the lovely and convenient 'T' early on and walked ourselves through town. We got to see some ducks, statues, churches, a killer public library and a drink on top of the tallest building in town.

Pit-Stop for a kickass cupcake. mmm!

The fun continued on that evening to a unique event called 'The Donkey Show'. I'm not sure I will look at butterflies the same again. Contrary to what you're thinking this show is actually a theater performance based in a 70's Dance club (and we danced) and based off of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. Most of the characters who wore clothes did so in drag. I didn't understand the plot at any point, which I attribute to never seeing any version of the performance, written or otherwise. I did understand that aside from John and I every other dude there had to be also into dudes and understandably so. Regardless, I loved it, the whole glittery mess.

Laura is actually not in pain, nor angry.

Everyone woke up hungover the next morning, new adventures through the city was the fix. We had a really fun and packed day. We started with a trip to Harpoon Brewery and got to drink beer fresh from the tank, which was a first. Harpoon is the best brewery I've never heard of, and I've heard of a Yuengling. Brewery tours are best when the beer is good and the tastings are hearty, this was no exception. We bought a growler to go and carried it with us (full, mind you) to all of the rest of our adventures of the day.

After Harpoon we got excellent some Boston sea food staples which miraculously cured Laura of her brown bag sickness.

Next we went to the Boston Institute of Contemporary Arts. It was a very interesting experience, as an art major I really never want to say I hate art, but sometimes the shit that gets into a museum blows my mind. There were some really cool and interesting pieces hidden amongst the other art. I really liked this movie that had 9ish screens and you basically immersed yourself into the film with changing surroundings setting the place. I got a nice greeting from the guy in front when he told me "I can check your beer into the coat check for you".

After that we took our beer to Goorin Brothers Hat store. I loved it. Dark wood and hats everywhere. Laura and I both left with something new for our heads.

After that we drank the best Hot Coco I've ever tasted. Ever.

We took it easy that night remembering our previous night and looking ahead to everyone's big day next. We had a fantastic dinner of pizza, wine, and smiles aplenty.

Day three was epic.
It started off with a jaunt through Harvard looking for a geocache which was one of the coolest ones I've done. Mostly because of how public it is.

Next, Laura and I were ushered around Boston via John and the red line painted and paved through Boston known as the freedom trail. We walked all over the damn city with a private tour of a battleship and capped it off with a march up (and back down) 294 stairs to the top of the bunker hill memorial. We learned a lot about Boston's history and of America's as well. John proved to be an excellent tour guide filling the walking portions with his knowledge of events that unfolded around this historic city.

Handcock's headstone looks like a penis.

Ride in opposition.

We finished our grand adventure off with a great meal, followed by a fantastic dessert, and some tired legs.

It was so great to catch up with Sarah again and I miss her. The great thing about great friends is that even after not really hanging out for years you can step in right where you left off and things are good, really good. I loved Boston, its got nearly everything I miss about city life, people, useful public transportation, interesting and lively history, endless meal options, great places to drink, a large body of water, a few hills, and no corn anywhere. Would I go back? Absolutely.