Thankful.

Tis the season, after all, to express my gratitude, and so here it goes: a post that is in no way intended to be humble-braggy, or clichéd-cheesy, or over-the-top. I'm just insanely fortunate and the more I stop to reflect on that, the warmer-fuzzier I feel. 

I am thankful, first and foremost, for my family. My amazing, insane, quirky and close-knit family. I'm thankful that we are us. Our shenanigans, inside jokes, supportiveness and complete, bone-deep appreciation for each other have never felt more important or valuable to me than this year. I've taken my family for granted for so long, because I just figured everyone had families like this...so replete with love and care that it was almost an afterthought. This year, I know that's not the case, and I am so grateful that I have a family I always have chosen and will always choose over just about everyone else in the world. 

I'm thankful for my grandma. Grandma Lo has always secretly been my favorite, partially because of her appreciation for the American Girl dolls of my childhood, and partially because she just seems like what a grandma should be. My Grandpa Leo passed away on the night of Thanksgiving last year, and this year has been hard for Grandma Lo without him. It has, however, brought the best of her extended family together to surround her in his absence. Whether it was Friday afternoon wine after work, Sunday Funday with the best aunts and cousins, or field trips, hosting, and adventures, I've built such a close, loving relationship with her this year.

I am thankful for a job that has completely changed my outlook on professional satisfaction. This time last year, I was enjoying three weeks of funemployment and "detoxing" from a job that truly was toxic for me. Fast-forward, and I have a job that I am really good at, that couldn't be more suited to my weird blend of strengths or force me to overcome my weaknesses more effectively. I have a boss who appreciates me and what I contribute, and shares my sense of humor to an almost-eerie T. Recently, I was surprised with a new position, one that puts me years ahead of where I thought I'd be on the career path, and it is so humbling and encouraging that people high-up in the company believe in me and what I can do. I wake up every day completely content with my job...which I never thought would be the case. It is so intensely satisfying. 

I am thankful to have surrounded myself with a network of friends up here in the Cities and all over the country who are just about the greatest. I really needed my friends this year as I floundered through grieving a relationship, getting back on my feet, and becoming my own person again, and my friends were there for me through every step of the process. They listened to me weep over margaritas, distracted me when I got down in the dumps, and applauded every step forward I took, no matter how small or insignificant. They make me laugh, they let me cry, they force me to try harder and they let me be myself. They are the best reflection of who I am and want to keep being. 

Most importantly, I am thankful for the person I am becoming. 2014 has been a tumultuous year for me and for my sense of self. I started the year being systematically broken down by someone whose role in my life should have been to build me up, and as a result, I grew more and more directionless. I questioned my worth, my integrity, and just about every aspect of my personality that I had ever thought was right or good or positive. It was unhealthy in every way. 

Now, I'm getting back to a place where I can see myself through clear eyes. I am not perfect. There are a lot of aspects of who I am that could be improved, and I like to think I'm working on those as I go along. But I am a fundamentally good, warm, vibrant, worthy person, and what I have to offer is not to be scoffed at, beaten down or stifled to suit someone else's perception of how I should be. I'm re-developing my tenacity, my bullheaded optimism, and my unbridled excitement about life and its myriad delights. I have stopped feeling shame for loving what I love, I'm done apologizing for being myself, and I'm rediscovering the strength of character that will keep me from ever letting another person convince me I'm worthless.

To steal an utterly ubiquitous Camus quote, "In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." On Thanksgiving 2014, amidst everything else I have to appreciate, every blessing I'm counting (and counting again, like any good accountant), I am thankful to my core for my rediscovery of that invincible summer, of my invincible spirit. Here's to you and yours...may we all remember to appreciate the best in others, in our circumstances, and in ourselves this year. 

38 Hours with Life Coach Laura!

Could anything be better than fairly spontaneous visits from friends? Personally, I don't think so. One of the drawbacks of going far away for school is that my closest girls from college are scattered all over the country (and, in some cases, globally!). While it's nice to know that I could find a couch to crash on from coast to coast, it is hard to know that we miss out on so much of each other's lives based on our lack of proximity. 

Laura and I actually weren't close friends during undergrad because she's two years older than me...we bonded my senior year, when she was already well out of school. I started affectionately calling her "Life Coach Laura," because it felt like she was living my life two years ahead of me. We both marched in the Band of the Fighting Irish, majored in accounting, and spent our junior springs abroad in London. She also worked for a Big 4 accounting firm as an auditor, and also reclaimed her life and sanity after around two and a half years of torment. She now lives in Chicago with her standard poodle, Fiona, who is the most intelligent and perfect dog on the face of the planet. 

Laura came up for a quick weekend trip on the last truly beautiful weekend of our fall, and we took full advantage of the gorgeous weather to get her honorary Minnesotan on in a big way. She arrived around 9pm on Friday, and of course the first thing I did (well, after jumping around and hugging her a lot and effusing over how excited I was at a really high pitch) was drag her to Loring Kitchen, which is IN my building, for cocktails and late-night food. This is Laura's drink: 

We dubbed it the "tampontini" because, let's be real, that hibiscus flower looks pretty questionable. Fortunately it tasted better than it looks, and we enjoyed our burger/pizza and major catch-up before retiring to my apartment. Catch-up continued, and then we snuggled down in bed to watch "Scandal" and worship at the altar of Olivia Pope. 

The next morning, we woke up, listened to stand-up comedy and had coffee in bed, and meandered over to brunch at Spill the Wine around 10. Laura is a girl who brunches in exactly my style...no holds barred on the breakfast booze, and splitting entrées is fair game. Nothing could make me happier.

We started with apple cider doughnuts, split the lemon ricotta pancakes and the kimchi-fried breakfast rice, and tried one of each of the mason jar mimosas (strawberry basil was declared the universal fave this time). 

It wouldn't be a trip to Minneapolis without a stop at a few major landmarks: this weekend, we chose the Sculpture Garden and Minnehaha Falls, because it was 68 degrees, sunny and gorgeous out. We got the obligatory Spoonbridge picture(s)...

...meandered around the Sculpture Garden enjoying people-watching and art-viewing...

...and soaked up the sun and admired the leaves, which were peak-pretty that weekend. 

Minnehaha Falls was a madhouse, as they were hosting a Halloween party. Cute small children were abundant, but Laura, being a proud dog-mom, obsessed over the four-legged guests instead.

We parked far away and hiked in along the river, then down to the falls and up around the basin before calling it a day. It couldn't have been prettier! Quite the contrast from my January visit with Hannah!

That night, we had a date planned with the Minnesota Wild. Laura's a huge hockey fan (she roots for the Penguins) and had never been to an NHL game at the Xcel, though her first and last trip to the Twin Cities had been to see Notre Dame in the Frozen Four in 2011. We made a pre-game stop at The Nook to check off another Minnesota must-do: a Juicy Lucy! The highlight, I think, of our Nook dinner was the beer-battered, honey-drizzled, deep-fried bacon cheese curds. 

That's right. Did you just feel your arteries clog, too? They were sinful. Laura ate her first Juicy Lucy with obligatory caution...

...and enjoyed it. Yay!

We happened to luck into (and splurge on) amazing, amazing seats for the game. As in, second row, just to the left of the Wild players' bench, right off center ice. This was my first Wild game, and I got hooked insanely fast. With views like these (none of which are zoomed in!), how couldn't you? 

Did I mention it was a giveaway night? And that the giveaway was blaze-orange hats, courtesy of Gander Mountain and Pheasants Forever? Because it was. And it was wonderful. Talk about a hilariously, stereotypically Minnesota way to welcome my Laura to my beloved home state. To accompany her hat, she bought a camo-pattern Wild t-shirt. For a player she didn't even recognize. 

We had a blast, and to top it off the Wild beat the Lightning 7-2! 

The next morning, we made a quick stop at Glam Doll Donuts to ensure we maxed out our sugar intake before 10am. Hannah met us, thank goodness, because otherwise the speed and ferocity with which we housed six donuts would have been vaguely inappropriate. 

Full and hyper, we headed back to my place, where I had to bid Laura a tragically sad farewell so she could get home to Chicago and Fiona by dinner. I've been missing her ever since then, and begging her (and all my scattered friends) to brave the now-frozen tundra and come make my life complete again. Really, I promise it's not thaaaaat bad! 

Love you, Life Coach, and can't wait til our next reunion!

Kitchen Adventures: The Great Bar Bake-Off

A few weeks ago, after I was all settled from the move, I got to host my first super-important guests...my grandma, who I adore, and my godparents and parents, who aren't too bad either! I couldn't wait to show off my polished little apartment to them. My grandma had never seen one of my apartments before, which is probably a good thing considering the first one was kind of a dump and the second one was a den of premarital iniquity. This one though, in true Goldielocksian fashion, was just right, and so they planned for a Sunday afternoon of snacks and plenty of red wine. 

At this point in the story, it's important to note two critical details: first, everyone in my family loves to eat. Second, resultingly, everyone in my family has developed phenomenal cooking and hosting skills. As such, it was naturally imperative that I live up to the high standards the generations before me have set, right? 

Everyone decided on something to contribute. My grandma picked up four different kinds of gourmet cheese and crackers. My parents made antipasto skewers. My godmother made these amazing little sliders. And I got assigned dessert. 

Like any good Minnesota girl, my first thought upon hearing the phrases "dessert," "snacks," and "entertaining" was to resort to bars. They're such a Minnesota-ey thing, bars. And they're so easy! Well, hypothetically, anyway. Being a classic overly ambitious overachiever, I decided to make not one, but two varieties, to celebrate the pumpkin and apple flavors of fall. To do so, I turned to my excessive amount of fall Pinterest recipes, and came up with a few contenders. 

I settled pretty quickly on these Salted Caramel Apple Pie Bars for my apple flavor, but what to do for pumpkin that would be different and unique? I looked at these Pumpkin Cream Cheese bars, but decided to go with Pumpkin Toffee Blondies instead. Who doesn't love a good blondie? I was all for it. 

Then my parents and I went to see "Gone Girl" on the Saturday night before the party, and I had to race through the store in ten minutes flat before they closed. I grabbed chocolate-covered toffee instead of plain toffee, and threw in pumpkin spice chips and butterscotch chips, figuring it'd just work, damnit. And then I went home and started baking the blondies at 10:30 at night. An hour and a half later, they were a total lost cause. I don't know if my oven was too cool or if I screwed something up, but these blondies looked terrible--the outsides were high and charred, the inside was low and still in dough form, and the flavor was just plain...off. I mean, how do you make pumpkin blondies without any pumpkin? NO THANKS. There's not even a photo because they were so heinously unfortunate. They don't deserve a photo. 

Bar 1 of 3: Down for the count. I scraped those suckers straight into the trash and didn't even lick the batter spoon. Gross. 

Image c/o Taste of Home.

So I reverted to my planned pumpkin cream cheese bars, which entailed a 7am trip to the local Lunds to get chopped pecans, allspice, coriander, and, yes, pumpkin. Here began my adventure with streusel: see, you're supposed to make streusel with sugar and oats and nuts and cold cubed butter, right? And mix it til it's "rough and crumby." So I tried mixing it, and it formed like...a dough. Fortunately, the same ingredients also formed the crust of these guys, SO I mashed the "fail" into the pan and just tried again on the streusel. It wasn't particularly streusel-y, but it worked. And the bars came out, eventually, totally fine. The coriander added an interesting flavor, the streusel topping was streusel-ish, and the pumpkin-cream cheese base was inoffensive and yummy. 

Bar 2 of 3: Not going to win me the Pillsbury Bake-off anytime soon, but I'll take a moderate success over a demented blondie fail. 

Image c/o Sally's Baking Addiction.

But ahhh, the Salted Caramel Apple Pie Bars. Be still, my beating heart. For starters, I discovered the magic trick that is lining your baking pan with tinfoil for minimal cleanup and maximal non-stick. It will change your life--Lord knows it changed mine. These bars have a ridiculously decadent, rich English shortbread crust, which happened to be a breeze to make. While the crust baked, I peeled two apples, tossed them with some spices, and made streusel...MUCH more successfully this time...and then threw it all together for the easiest, most delicious bars ever. And then right before slicing them, I drizzled them all with some semi-homemade salted caramel (Thanks, T. Marzetti!...I did salt it myself...), and bam. Win. 

Bar 3 of 3: I will be trotting these out at every appropriate gathering imaginable, ever, because they are delectable and un-screw-uppable. I've already made them twice more...but the second and third time, I totally actually made salted caramel from scratch, using this recipe. It was SO GOOD. I ate several spoonfuls with no shame, and if you ask me, it totally elevated the bars past even their normal foodgasmic amazingness. Bonus points if you heat them up for 15 seconds...they are truly transcendent. 

Image c/o Parent Pretty.

A few weeks after my bar adventure and just in time for Halloween, I also made my secret weapon: Melt-in-Your-Mouth Pumpkin Cookies by Parent Pretty. Kaitlin and I made these for the first time last September when I visited her in Baltimore, and I got totally addicted...they truly are autumnal edible crack.  I've made them a couple times since with similar success. This time, though, I topped them with Brown Butter Pumpkin Spice Frosting. And it was ridiculous.

See, what I neglected to pay attention to was the yield of both the frosting and the cookies. So I doubled both, thinking that since I had several different Halloween/fall gatherings in the next several days, it made total sense to double the batch. Yeah. Don't double the batch. The batch makes 60-80 cookies. The frosting yields nearly two pounds of frosting. I ended up with ten dozen cookies, and while they're melt-in-your-mouth delicious, they're also flab-on-your-ass fattening, with TEN sticks of butter between the frosting and the cookies. Um, so thanks to the numerous friends who took pity on me and ate six. I love you, even though your newly-clogged arteries don't. 

And there you have it! My apartment's oven was christened, in epic fashion, with fall bars and cookies. Here's to Pinterest, pumpkin spice, and apple pie!

Restaurant Week: Kincaid's

Another quarter, another Restaurant Week! My cohorts in all things "gastronomic excess," Hannah and Kyle, ventured over to my neck of the woods in Saint Paul on Wednesday of the last Restaurant Week for a three-course dinner at one of my favorite places: Kincaid's! 

My family's been coming to Kincaid's for as long as I can remember, and now that I work practically across the street, it's easier than ever for me to stop in for a Maytag Bleu Cheese salad or lobster bisque for lunch in the bar (Um, yum). Their Restaurant Week menu had some of the pricier entrée options I've never sprung for, and I was so excited to try it all out!

For starters, let me just state that Kincaid's does two things very, very well: their wine list, and their bread. We split a bottle of delicious cabernet, and easily chomped through two baskets of the buttery, garlic-studded, lightly salted focaccia before we even placed our orders. 

Unlike our July expedition to Haute Dish, I only obnoxiously photographed my meal choices, instead of every dish any of us enjoyed, because although their food is delicious, Kincaid's presentation isn't as big a deal as Haute Dish's was. Here we go!

Course 1: Butternut Squash Soup with cracked pepper and creme fraiche. It was silky, creamy, savory perfection. I'm a huge sucker for squash soup in any form, but the creme fraiche really made it. The presentation didn't hurt either...the bowls arrived with just the creme fraiche in them, and the soup was poured tableside from a soup boat. Super hot, super yummy. 

Course 2: Chicken Dijon with garlic mashed potatoes and warm wilted greens with bacon vinaigrette. Look at that portion! So generous. I didn't finish it, despite my most valiant efforts...the chicken was crispy-crunchy outside, but under the crunchy breading there was a thin, creamy layer of dijon mustard sauce before the tender, perfectly-cooked chicken. The mashed potatoes were just the right amount of garlicky. And if I could bathe in that bacon vinaigrette...well, I'm not saying I wouldn't. (Kyle's short ribs and Hannah's salmon were also apparently noteworthy, considering they did power through and eat every bite!)

Course 3: Key lime pie. Hannah and Kyle had pumpkin creme brulee, which we didn't know was pumpkin until it arrived or else I probably would have ordered it too. That said, the key lime pie was delicious. I really needed something palate-cleansing after the rich chicken and soup, and the pie didn't disappoint. It was tart but not too sour, and the crust was really good too. I'd order it again. 

I'm already looking forward to next quarter's Restaurant Week!

Beer, Beethoven, and Black Sheep

Confession: I skipped lunch and drank copious amounts of beer last Thursday. 

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Did I get your attention? Good! I didn't skip lunch and drink copious amounts of beer at the same time. But Thursday was one for the record books in terms of spontaneous, incredibly fun, memorable moments, which is well worth the blog starter fake-out. 

I cranked up Classical MPR and pulled out of my building on Thursday morning just as the DJ started gushing about some amazing prodigy quartet from Rice University. She played them, I was instantly riveted, and she capped it off announcing they'd be performing a free Beethoven quartet at noon...right across the street from my office. 

The Schubert Club is a Twin Cities area classical performing arts organization that's been in existence for over 130 years, bringing a wide range of artists and venues together to provide ample performance and listening opportunities in the Twin Cities for classical music lovers and novices alike. The performance I heard advertised was one of their "Courtroom Concerts," bringing local and international artists in for intimate performances in an old courtroom of the Saint Paul Landmark Center. The acoustics are great, the artists get up close and personal, and the experience sounded too unique and serendipitous to miss. So I skipped lunch and headed over around 11:45 to hear the Cordova Quartet in person! 

The Corvoda Quartet is a group of guys my age who met as undergrad soloists at Rice University, and are now artists in residence studying at the University of Texas. They're spending several months in the Twin Cities mentoring high schoolers at the MacPhail Center for Music. They're adorable (um, hi) and incredibly talented. The emcee for the day, a Schubert Club composer-in-residence, ran through their bios, which featured as much about their personal lives as their professional bios. How's this for accomplished: One of them is a fiddling champ and award-winning swing dancer, one founded a young people's international summer music festival in Italy, one has a passion for craft beer, and one founded a concert series in Aspen so he could ski AND perform. How do I date one?!?!

The performance was mind-bendingly amazing. I really enjoyed that the emcee gave background on the piece before the show: Beethoven composed this quartet just as he accepted he was going deaf, and the original score supposedly had numerous personal notes written in the margins, including this gem: "Let your deafness no longer be a secret, even in art!" How inspiring! The quartet was composed for an artistic, autocratic count and was written to be avant-garde and totally different, heavy on diminished chords, inversions and riffs on melodies that weren't widely accepted at the time. Beethoven's response, upon receiving criticism for the piece's "weirdness?" "This is not a piece for your time...it is for after." 

The Cordova guys did it insane justice, and encored with a Haydn piece that was dizzyingly technical and fast. I adore string performances...just watching the artistry, movement, and the way the four of them played off each other and exchanged raised eyebrows, leaned into each other and even winked added so much to the experience. I'll absolutely be returning for more Courtroom Concerts...there may not be such a thing as free lunch, but I'll take free music in lieu of lunch any day. 

After work, I met Kelsie to continue our Twin Cities taproom explorations! This time, we ventured to Tin Whiskers, a relative newbie to the scene within walking distance of my office. The brewery was founded by three electrical engineers as an after-hours project, and quickly blossomed into a unique, thriving taproom themed around their day jobs!

All the beers are named after electrical engineering jokes or concepts...the Ampere Amber, Short Circuit Stout, and Flipswitch IPA are joined this fall by the Schottky Pumpkin Ale, named after a renowned physicist. Even Tin Whiskers is an engineering concept...named for the way tin sometimes forms feathery "whiskers" on its surface, causing short circuits. We ended up sitting and talking to two employees, who were happy to show us an example of "whiskers"...on a piece of the space shuttle Endeavor, nonetheless! 

Kels and I decided to order two flights...the best way to sample every beer they had. I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that every one of the beers was one I would order again, independent of the flight. Their light beers were smooth, their dark beers were complex and savory...particularly the stout, which had the yummiest hazelnut undertones...but my personal favorite was the Nitro'd IPA. I had no idea what it meant to "nitro" a beer, but apparently it's just a way to add carbonation with nitrogen instead of CO2. It results in a smoother, creamier finish with super-dense foam. I was so excited about it that I sloshed half of it down my arm/watch...and got another free flight of it just because! 

The taproom was super industrial, and prominently featured their darling little robot logo. There were numerous board games set out for patrons' enjoyment, the beer list scrolled across a few TVs, and the bar was open to the giant back-room brewery...so neat! 

Best part of Tin Whiskers, if you ask me? Black Sheep Pizza delivers there from their St. Paul location right around the corner! Kels and I, after large amounts of yummy beer on empty stomachs, couldn't have been more excited about the prospect of coal-fired pizza. We ordered two...their amazing meatball ricotta, with roasted garlic, and a smoked mozzarella-and-pepperoni combo that made my taste buds sing. The leftovers tasted just as good the next day for lunch! 

There you have it, friends...a November Thursday that highlighted how far I've come since last year in all the best ways. Beethoven over lunch break, leaving for happy hour before the post-Daylight Savings sunset, totally relaxed and loving life? I'll take it, every Thursday please!