SMB - A Gotta-Know Baking Acronym

It's no secret I love to bake. Any excuse will find me toting treats to work so A and I don't eat too many sweets. I made a big leap in my baking experience by finally trying out SMB. Swiss Meringue Buttercream. The end-all of decorating icing. Besides fondant, but we'll save that for another time.

From my reading, I knew many people found SMB to be difficult to make correctly. Then I stumbled upon a blog whose author swore it was not difficult. When one of my coworker's birthdays came up, I took the leap. And I'm pleasantly surprised to say, it was not hard! There are multiple steps and you have to pay attention to what you're doing, but my first attempt turned out delicious! It's less sweet than traditional buttercream. So if you don't like tons of sickly sweet icing, this is up your alley.

Since SMB is the king for decorating, I also tried a more difficult icing style. And it worked out too! A double-win!

The cake itself was a dark chocolate I've made many times. I LOVE it. Super moist and so scrumptious.

I can't get enough of the ruffles! Coworker J's favorite color is blue, but I didn't know what shade, so I chose this fun sky blue/turquoise blend.

The best part of this ruffle icing: I could mess up and it was no big deal. Just keep going!

If you're hesitating at trying Swiss meringue buttercream, don't! I promise it's worth it!

No Longer Chicken About Chicken

For Christmas, I gave A a subscription to Top Chef University, an online set of cooking courses taught by Top Chef contestants. Ever since we got into cooking shows like Iron Chef, Chopped, and MasterChef, we have been expanding our culinary skills. One thing we had not tackled was breaking down a whole chicken. You could say we were "chicken" about it. (Sorry, couldn't resist!)

Thankfully Top Chef University had a whole video on how to accomplish it. First, we bought our (unlucky) chicken and rinsed it clean.

Then we got down to business. By "we", I mean mostly A. However, the photos end here because I jumped in to help. It was not as easy as Chef Kevin Gillespie made it look! We own a very good chef's knife yet had difficulties getting through the chicken.

But we eventually succeeded and threw all the gross parts and bones into a pot to make our own stock. How fancy!

Now we have frozen cubes of stock just waiting to enhance our future meals!

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

I know it's been a long while since my last post. < Hangs head in shame > Let me give you a glimpse into the past couple months, then I'll fill you in on how hectic May has been so far.

For two weekends, the Chicago Transit Authority did work on the El line tracks behind our building.

We were told we could not access our garage from 6:00PM on Friday through 6:00AM on Monday. Which is annoying, but there's street parking, right? Wrong. Our street parking is 2-hour limited, paid, or overnight regulated during winter (meaning no parking between 3AM and 7AM until May 1st). So what were we to do? I took it upon myself to write our alderman and the CTA's liaison. Never heard from either, but the next day I received an email from our building manager saying the CTA was providing parking at a lot down the street. Win!

Soon April was in full swing with more rain than we'd seen in a long time. It also got warm very quickly. By the middle of the month we determined it was time to start our next project: garden boxes for the balcony!

We bought lumber at Home Depot and had them make the majority of the cuts. This was our design.

 We finished the cuts and assembled them at home. Another step was to drill holes for the bolts which would attach them to the balcony railing.

They were easier to build than I thought it would be. Once the boxes were built, we painted them a fun tangerine color.

We left them out during the week to dry. When we came to the next weekend we finished the boxes and attached them to our railing. The first step was to drill holes in the bottom of each box for water drainage.

Next we slid the bolts through the holes. We ordered the bolts online because no hardware store had 12-inch carriage bolts. 

We designed the boxes ourselves after being unable to find any pre-made brackets which would fit on our railing. The top row of bolts rests on the railing and the bottom row is to keep the wind from flipping them up. The bolts come through from outside the railing and then we secured them with another piece of wood. I even learned how to ratchet!

We were slightly nervous about hanging them 11 stories in the air. This design was created by us - a doctor and a consultant. Who knew if it would actually work? So far, it is!

 We started our garden the next day with seeds, two tomato plants and one chocolate mint plant. Which ended up being a mistake as it snowed that week. In late April. As I saw the other day on the internet... "Chicago: Where the weather's made up and the points don't matter!" (Who's Line Is It Anyway? anyone?) So our poor tomato plants froze.

Turns out arugula is extremely hardy - it still came up! We re-planted the other seeds and were lucky the tomato plants decided to come back to life. Look at our garden now!

From front to back: Cucumber, tarragon, green bean, tomato, green onion, arugula

Left to right: Tomato, chocolate mint, cilantro

Too many tarragon plants for one box!

Green onion and arugula.

One more arugula along with a flower plant finally coming back from the snow.

We have pepper plants inside until they get bigger. 

We had extra pots so we planted a couple extra seeds inside.

We are super excited to eat plants from our garden this summer! Hopefully they keep growing!

It's a Doctor's Life... #2

Another hint your husband is a surgeon...

These things are all around your home!

For those of you not initiated into the world of operations, these are surgical forceps the doctor uses to hold a needle when suturing. Apparently practice makes perfect and A can be found with them in his hand more often than not.

Banh For Mi

Yes, folks, we are still alive up here in Chi-town. A is working nights and I have been putting in more hours than normal at work due to multiple deployments of new web and mobile app functionality. Including two overnights so far - fun times!

In between the madness, we managed to carve out some time to try our hand at making one of our newly-discovered favorite dishes: Banh Mi. For those of you who aren't familiar, banh mi is a Vietnamese sandwich. It consists of a meat (usually pork of some sort), lightly pickled vegetables, jalapeno, cilantro, and a variant of mayonnaise, all on a rice flour baguette. They are SUPER delicious!

For our experiment, we brined our pork with some sriracha sauce and other fun things the day before. We also made the do chua - pickled carrots and daikon. Do chua is super easy. All you do is peel and slice carrots and daikon, knead them with salt until they're bendable, then marinate in a sugar-vinegar-water blend. Simple and tasty!

The next night A carved the pork into thin slices which we then pan-fried.

Lately Orion has been a very attentive sous-chef.

We made our own soy sauce/mayonnaise blend and even threw in some sriracha sauce for good measure. The baguettes we bought from a Vietnamese restaurant - they bake them fresh daily and use true rice flour. Super delicious! All together, it's one amazing sandwich.

Can you say yum?