Lately I'm Loving: Irish Edition

Because I’m obsessing over Notre Dame in general lately, here’s a quick roundup of all things Irish on the Internet these days…

--I’m one of those naïve, idealistic girls who thinks college athletes shouldn’t be paid to play. Interesting to hear our university president, Father Jenkins, basically agree with me. While I think the article exposes some critical shortsightedness and he makes some fairly big conjectures about just how untouchable ND football is, I found this New York Times article a fascinating read.

--With starting QB Malik Zaire out of commission for the rest of the season with a broken ankle, I found myself wondering (probably along with the rest of Irish Nation) who the heck our new kid QB was. Enter Grantland with a great Q&A rundown on DeShone Kizer’s gameday performance last Saturday, along with incisive but accurate commentary on everyone’s current state of mind in the post-Zaire era.

--In non-football news, campus played host to US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor as classes kicked off a couple weeks ago as she addressed a packed house in a fireside chat type format with NBC News correspondent Anne Thompson. The recap of her speech makes me wish I could have been there…her topics and presentation sound fascinating. Catch a brief clip courtesy of WNDU, campus TV, here. 

--I’m almost considering adding Showtime to my already-expensive basic cable package just to be able to tune into their new Notre Dame show, “Hard Knocks: A Season With Notre Dame Football.” It’s going to be interesting to see how they handle chronicling an entire season, especially one that’s already been plagued with injuries and looks to be an uphill battle to a bowl game…or the championship…hey, a girl can dream.

--And last, but certainly not least…this photo will never cease to make me giggle. Mostly because I feel like we ALL felt that way after the game ended…100% wrung-out and completely incapable of even basic human function. So…go Irish, beat Yellowjackets!

101 in 1001--a double-header! #53, #62

Lately it’s felt like I’ve been powering through my 101 in 1001 list, and I’m completely loving it! Last week, Hannah and I enjoyed a night that quickly became one of the highlights of my summer as we checked off not one, but TWO of the items on my list: learning to grill, and taking a cooking class with a friend!

We signed up for Kitchen Window's “Party BBQ: Summer Cocktail Party” class way back in June, as soon as it became available. It sounded like the perfect class for us…alcohol, lots of munchies, and a foolproof forum to expand our novice cooking skills! Last Monday we showed up starving and ready to go. 

Oh my god, this class could not have surpassed my expectations more extremely. Upon check-in, our first stop was the bar, where we picked up the first round of the evening’s drinks before heading out to the beautiful rooftop deck, where our class would take place. 

Led by Jonathan Gans, one of the head chefs at Kitchen Window, the class was an open-forum style where the chefs and assistants walked us through each of the dishes we’d be making up front before letting us loose to cook and graze at our own pace.

Six stations were set up around the rooftop, and we were split into teams named after celebrity chefs. Hannah and I were "Team Rick Bayless," which just made me crave the tortas from his restaurant at O'Hare (if you EVER fly through there, it's a must-stop). We were thrilled to be assigned to the station we immediately thought sounded yummiest: grilled avocados stuffed with homemade crab salad! 

Look at that concentration! Hannah was the perfect person to take a class like this with--she got just as into it as I did, but we joked around and laughed like lunatics through almost the entire thing. We're also similarly novice cooks, so it was great to be able to get excited about basic things like learning a new knife technique or figuring out how to tell when meat should be flipped. 

Clearly we got pretty excited about our first finished product! I'm fairly sure we were already the joke of the entire class at this point because we got so enthusiastic about everything...especially the breaks between cooking to get to eat our appetizers! 

One of the highlights of the class, for me, was learning about the different types of grills and various techniques associated with each. We tried out three different grills over the course of the class...the famous Green Egg grills, a high-tech gas grill, and a coal-burning grill. We also worked a bit with pizza stones in the grills, which opened up a plethora of other grilling possibilities! I loved the fact that the class took things outside the classic grilling box, really hammering home that grills aren't just for meat. We worked with ramekins of potatoes, the aforementioned avocados, puff pastry, and even grapes directly on the grill: 

While we did get really into it, we had just as much fun talking with the amazing volunteer assistants at each station as we did actually pretending to be good cooks. The volunteers were so patient with the two of us, and I loved chatting with them about how they got involved with Kitchen Window and what other classes they recommend. Turns out that volunteers get a free class for every four classes they assist with, and they always get to eat at every class! Hannah and I were immediately all about signing up. I mean, imagine this face of joy all the time: 

Enough rambling though. Without further ado, here's what we made: 

Our grilled avocados and crab salad...

Grilled tomato-and-herbed goat cheese tart...

Smoked sweet potato and Gruyere stacks...these were SO good and so cute they merited a before and after! We prepared them in layers like classic au gratin potatoes, but they were cooked in mini ramekins that were pre-heated on a pizza stone in the grill. They were to-die-for...so good I'm planning on persuading my parents to let me make them for Thanksgiving! A fun bonus: since the ramekins were hot, the first layer of cream made an awesome sizzling sound that Hannah and I, being a bit buzzed on wine/cider, thought was super hardcore and worthy of filming: 

I fully know we're a bit ridiculous. Especially my wanna-be Emeril Lagasse "BAM" in the background as I, oh-so-anticlimactically, place a potato in the ramekin. That, my friends, is what pro chefs are made of. HA. 

We also made BBQ mango chicken sliders with grilled pineapple, which gave us the opportunity to try out an awesome, super-precise digital meat thermometer. I think that'll be the first thing I invest in if my new obsession with all things culinary continues...I'm always afraid of undercooking meat, so I inevitably overcook it. 

Our second-to-last station was possibly the most unique: grilled grape mascarpone crostini! We tossed the grapes in a little grapeseed oil with sea salt and threw them right on the grill for a few minutes...it blisters the skin and makes them extra-sweet. In the meantime, we grilled crostini and mixed up mascarpone cheese with a little thyme, lemon, and salt and pepper. The cheese on the hot crostini got deliciously melt-y, topped with the hot grapes for an absolutely insane sweet-and-salty combination. I thought it was going to be my favorite of the night until we (rolled over to) hit up the last station: 

GRILLED LIMONCELLO SHRIMP. Excuse me while I go wipe the drool off my chin. I don't even know how to describe how insanely delicious this was...fresh shrimp tossed with cane sugar, butter and lemon juice, grilled, then topped with a sauce made of limoncello, olive oil, garlic, lemon zest and fresh herbs. As full as I was, I couldn't stop myself from dragging my fork through every last drip of the sauce. 

The best thing about this class, in my opinion? As gourmet as each appetizer sounded (and tasted), each was easy to prepare and comprised of pretty basic ingredients. Nothing took longer than fifteen minutes start to finish, and everything was laid out, explained, and demonstrated in an incredibly comprehensible manner. It made everything feel really accessible, even for someone who hardly knows how to scramble an egg. 

Thanks to Jonathan and Kitchen Window's amazing team of staff and volunteer assistants...

...and of course to BFW and partner-in-all-adventures, the lovely Hannah, for an amazing evening! Just so you know, we're available for hire to grill for any of your upcoming social functions...it's dinner and entertainment all in one! (I kid, I kid...but seriously, who wants to come over for dinner sometime?!)

For more information on Kitchen Window's classes and offerings, head here. Check out the rest of my 101 in 1001 for good measure to see what other adventures are on the docket! 

organize me, please...

I’ve pretty much decided that my life’s new default setting is going to be “doing too much of everything all at once.” As has been mentioned a few times over the last several months, this summer was insanely busy for me. This fall doesn’t look like it’s going to be slowing down at all, either. The months of September and October are my new busiest time at work, as I take on running the Employee Giving Campaign in addition to my normal job duties, and when you throw football, two more weddings, three work trips, and a long weekend in Boston on top of my already-hectic social calendar, you’ve got a recipe for burnout.

I like to do too much. I love to read, and I’m not happy unless I’ve plowed through half a dozen books in any given month. I'm working on being better about writing regularly both here and offline, but I put a lot of time into that given my perfectionist streak. I’ve been getting up before 5am to get a workout in…and anyone who knows me knows that a wakeup time “in the 5’s,” let alone earlier, is my personal anathema. Managing all of this has turned into a major exercise in organization. A few ways I’m keeping it all together without tearing my hair out:

I’ve used a planner for the last several years. Erin Condren’s “Life Planner” has always been my go-to, but I’m liking the look of the Emily Ley planner more and more as I shop around. I use a planner to track, among other things, my appointments, reservations, and events, not to mention meal plans, workouts completed, and occasionally shopping lists. I also (duh) monitor birthdays, and use the address book in back to keep track of all my girlfriends’ addresses (for spontaneous snail mail, obviously).

As we head into fall, I’ve been working on being better about eating out less. As such, I’ve started meal planning pretty extensively, and although it’s pretty basic in the grand scheme of things, it’s absolutely saved my sanity as things have gotten busier. I’m sure I’ll go into more detail in the future, but suffice it to say tracking what I’ll be packing for lunch and making sure I have dinner options ready to go for like…a week at a time has been amazing.

One of my favorite digital ways to stay on track is using a countdown app. It’s crazy-helpful as I need to plan out vacation time or know how much longer I can put off buying a wedding gift/making a hotel reservation, etcetera (god, that sounds terrible to say). I’m currently using “Dreamdays 365,” which is a pretty, clean interface and allows me to see everything coming up at a glance.

Taking things to the next level tech-wise is on my to-do list, but I have no idea how to do it. I’d call myself a fledgling user of iCal/Google Cal, and my Outlook calendar at work is religiously maintained…but only from a professional standpoint. Hopefully I’ll find/make time to sit down and actually research whether or not there’s a way to sync everything up so I have my work calendar integrated with my personal calendars. Who knows? Might not be the best way for me to do it. I guess we’ll see.

And of course, it wouldn’t be me unless I was tracking absolutely everything via endless to-do lists (not always holiday-colored, but ALWAYS color-coded). Whether they’re in the Notes app of my phone, on my work PC in a massive Excel workbook, or scribbled on a legal pad, I’ve written everything down and loved deleting/crossing off/highlighting something as it’s completed for as long as I can remember. I even throw in social events just to ensure that I’m actually accounting for all of my time…it’s fun to highlight off a happy hour, after all!

Here’s to the busiest fall on record…and to me not losing it and turning into a recluse to compensate this winter! 

A vintage "Liz Embarrasses Herself" story.

Those who know me well in real life know I’m not the most graceful/naturally poised human being. I put my foot in my mouth about as often as I put it somewhere I can trip over it. My natural lack of social finesse often does, however, conspire with circumstances to create some pretty classic embarrassing stories.

I shared just one in the past (omg fledgling blog days!), but trust me…it’s at least a weekly occurrence to find me totally mortified by some dumb incident. This week alone, I may or may not have enjoyed the experiences of falling up an escalator, having my coffee spilled “by” a revolving door, and walking into a tree. And now, to start your week off on the right note at the expense of my dignity, here’s a classic one for you.

I texted the story to a friend or two, just the kind of people who know me and the tragicomedy that is my day-to-day existence, and eventually got the point where I could laugh at this ridiculousness instead of feeling like a prize idiot.

And that, my friends, is the reason you don’t randomly pick at stray threads…or buy cheap Old Navy pants and expect them to remain structurally sound if you do! 

a quick 9/11 thought

I was twelve, and in Mr. Schaefer’s first-period seventh grade geography class. Mr. Schaefer was a member of the National Guard and I’m pretty sure also a veteran, but I was so young and the school year was so fresh and, honestly, I didn’t care at that point. I remember an announcement over the junior high intercom, and then him stoically trying to continue to teach and being so frazzled and distracted. He flipped the news on for the last ten minutes of class, right as the second tower was hit.

Mrs. McCabe in second-period math was, frankly, kind of a bitch and yelled at us for talking about it. She point-blank refused to address any of our confused, juvenile, innocent questions. I had already decided earlier in the week that I hated her, and her squelching of our desire to know, to participate, to process what we by then knew was a turning point just cemented that fact.

Mr. Funk and Mr. Keifenheim, in third-period band, didn’t even try to teach. They wheeled the two TV’s out and turned on the news and let us watch the entire hour. Mr. Funk cried. That was the first time I had ever seen an adult cry, outside of a wedding or a funeral, and I think that was the moment I realized this was our generation’s defining moment.

It’s funny, when you first start to process something through an adult lens rather than that of a child. For me, as nascent as my awareness of the world around me was at that time, 9/11 became the point that I started to think that way. I stopped identifying with the world through the precocious, advanced adult literature I was reading, and started observing the real adults around me more. Seeing how this stripped their emotions and remoteness away, leaving them processing it just as raw and unsure as we were, is really the first time I ever remember feeling truly vulnerable.

When I went off to college, I encountered so many people whose experience of the events was so much more immediate than mine. Many of my close friends were New Yorkers, and the way that 9/11 shaped and touched their lives made my own connection to it pale and seem paltry in comparison. That said, though, I think for all of us 9/11 was a point of coalescence and a collective loss of a certain innocence, the first time all our lives were collectively marked by tragedy and we were ever unified by a universal experience. We were all old enough to understand, to remember a distinct “before” and comprehend the “after.” It became the moment that will define everything we have experienced and will experience thereafter, in some way. Every year, I find myself thinking about that. I think I always will.