The Chicago Bucket List

So…back when we first moved here a year and a half ago, we came up with a bucket list for the city of Chicago – as in, all the fun things we wanted to do while we were living in the area. We did one for San Diego too (you’ll see the links to them both up at the top). We did pretty good with the San Diego list. We’ve done HORRIBLY with the Chicago list. But let me remind you that for the majority of our year and a half here we’ve been either working, going to school, doing an internship, or studying for the CPA. That made our free time rather limited. But now that we’re waiting on the scores for John’s LAST test (please oh please oh PLEASE let him have passed!!!!) and I’m the stay at home wifey, having finished my internship last month and I’m not looking for work until we move, helloooooo free time on the weekends! This might sound crazy, but I LOVE being able to get the laundry done, the groceries bought and the apartment clean during the week so that we can actually go do fun stuff on Saturday! Because before, it was ALL getting done on Saturday and we were lucky to get a chance to go out and do something out of the ordinary.

So. Back to the bucket list. Two things on our list were to go to the Field Museum and the Shedd Aquarium. So we hit BOTH this past Saturday and made a day trip out of it! And we definitely utilized all the city had to offer ;) We took a metra train into the city, then we took a bus to the museum(s) and then on the way home we took the “L” (elevated train) to get to the metra station to get back home. Whew!

But anyway, we had a really good time! We stopped at the Field Museum first. We met Sue the T-Rex! (and I just have to say that the architecture in there is just beautiful!!)

We didn’t really get that many pictures inside because the lighting is so bad (they probably do that on purpose ;) but we really enjoyed the Ancient Egypt, Ancient Americas, and Nomadic Peoples of Africa exhibits. Oh, and the hall of Gems. Always love looking at sparkly gems and jewelry ;)

Sidenote: The weather has been crazy. Not surprising really, but it’s worth mentioning because we got about 5-6” of snow over the weekend so this is what we did on our way to the aquarium

And today it’s been raining. So not cool, because it’ll be ice by tonight. Yucky.

So we had some lunch at the museum and took a little break (we walked around the museum for about 4 hours) and then headed over to the aquarium. We didn’t spend as much time there, because (can I just say) what’s included in the basic admission is kinda lame. We got to see everything on the main floor and that was all we paid for. The place was big, but it only took us about an hour and a half to see everything. They didn’t even have garden eels! (They are my favorite) We didn’t really want to see the 3D movie and the other stuff they try to sell to you when you buy your tickets. And again…no pictures…bad lighting…sorry.

Finally, tired, but happy, we made our way to the train station to get home. John snapped this cool picture from the elevated platform and you can see the aquarium at the end of the road

Cool, huh? And of course, us! :)

We made it home, had dinner, made cookies, ate said cookies, and crashed.

All in all, a great day with my bestest friend!

Very Many Much Moussen!

Brian Regan anyone? :)

Well, this was our last week on French Mousse cakes, and there was a lot of cake going on. Lots of cake. I should probably remind you to grab your drool catching towel, bib, or whatever it is that you use, ‘cuz we made some really yummy stuff this week.

We are now in Kitchen 2 (I promised last week I’d have a picture):

I like K2. But it has horrible lighting for all my pictures, so please just keep that in mind because I’m going to be here until the end of the term. Maybe by then I will have figured how to make the lighting for FOR me. We’ll see.

We learned how to make puff pastry this week. We learned how to make an inverted puff pastry in tarts class, and that one is harder, because the butter is on the outside of the dough. A normal puff pastry has the butter on the inside. (sorry if that doesn’t make sense…I could go into a very detailed explanation, but I figure you’re here to see the pictures ;) We mixed the water and flour and let that rest, and then folded the butter in and made layers upon layers or butter and flour.
Once the puff pastry dough was ready, we made what’s called a Pithivier (pih-tih-vee-YEH). We cut two circles and filled the center with almond cream mixed with pastry cream (YUM) and scalloped the edges. Then we did some fancy scoring on the top so it would have a design when it baked. Here it is all ready to go into the oven:
And here is it baked! Pretty cool with the design, huh?
It always amazes me how big it gets!! Those edges were flat!! All the layers of butter we folded in make it puff up to more than 5X it’s original thickness!
Ahhh…and the flaky goodness inside…yum!

We finished up our chocolate and hazelnut cake this week too! YES! Although I’m ashamed to say that my glazing was awful. And I’m going to swallow my pride and show you anyway. And then to make up for it, I’ll show you what the inside looks like. ;) Here it is, frozen solid and ready to be glazed:

…too many air bubbles!!!

And there’s a hole in the side!! :(

So I, uh, covered it up with chocolate… ;)

But don’t feel too bad, I got so much better by the end of the week, I glazed two more cakes magnificently ;) Oh yeah, and here’s the inside, with all of it’s chocolate and hazelnut goodness

I know. Try to contain yourself. ;)

I actually missed a day of class this week (*GASP!!!*). It was really sad. I woke up Wednesday morning with a really bad earache combined with a bad headache. I went to the doctor and he flushed my ear out and gave me some drops. By the time the appointment was over and I’d finally gotten my prescription, it was too late to get to school, and I was still in a lot of pain. Blech. I was hoping I’d get through all my time at school without missing any days. I guess one isn’t so bad… Anyway, I was feeling much better by Thursday and I finished off the rest of the week. While I was gone, my class finished the white chocolate raspberry cake. And my table partner was SO NICE and saved me my half of the cake to bring home! And it’s definitely a favorite.

Oh. My. Deliciousness. (this is Chef’s because mine was wrapped and ready to take home before I got a picture. But mine pretty much looks like this ;) We molded the cake with a texture sheet so it has waves on the top. It was then sprayed with a pink colored white chocolate spray. So cool. I know.
It’s mine and Gabi’s favorite :)

After those cakes, we had pretty much finished all the stuff in the book we were supposed to learn, so by Wednesday, we were learning cool extra stuff. We made apple turnovers with left over puff pastry dough and apple compote.
They aren’t called apple turnovers in French. Chef told us their French name…and I forgot it. But it turns out it translates to something about slippers. Apple slippers. I like.

Chef Dimitri and his wife own the pastry shop Vanille (vah-NEE) downtown, so we learned to make some of the cakes they sell there! I missed most of the first one, being home sick and all, but both were yummy chocolate cakes. And these ones I glazed fabulously :)
(again, sorry about the lighting…)

And here’s the second one (I know, they look the same. But they’re not. They are VERY different on the inside ;)

It’s so shiny, I can see myself taking a picture!!!! OoooOooOOooo FANCY

This second one is a chocolate caramel cake. I got a picture of the inside of chef’s

The bottom layer is a chocolate streussel crisp. Oh man it was so good.

That’s me eating the leftover streussel crisp from our batch. It’s a good thing I’m exercising again…We were to take both chocolate cakes home on Friday. That would normally be just fine, but during break Friday afternoon, I got a text from John saying he got two FREE tickets to a Shen Yun performance that night from someone at work (they couldn’t use them anymore). I had to put the cakes SOMEWHERE! I couldn’t leave them at school because on Friday and after a class unit, we clear everything out of the coolers and freezers. So, because I have a totally fabulous husband, John came and picked them up after he got off work and the cakes are now happily awaiting consumption by his coworkers on Monday. (they are in his work freezer ;)

After class we ran and found some dinner and headed to the Civic Opera House for some Classical Chinese Dance

It was pretty cool! (But I’m glad we saw it for free ;) Then we got home around 11:30pm and crashed. It’s been a crazy week!

Yay for Birthdays!!

It's my turn to have a birthday! I turned 20 on August 3rd, and it is quite exciting to be out of the teens ;) And I had lots of surprises!!

the first one was when I came out of my room that morning to get ready for the day and there was this big birthday message for me on the door!!

Then when John came to pick me up, i got a big balloon and a bag of sour skittles!! YUM. :)

Unfortunately, John had to work, and for once, i had the afternoon free! John has been helping test a new product for Provo Craft in Spanish Fork. Oh well, i got to finally clean my room and now it's nice and tidy.

After John came back from work, I got some more surprises!! My favorite kids book, Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late, and some pretty earrings from the Farmer's Market!! John's parents got me a gift card from IKEA!! I am *most* excited! :)

Then we went to one of my favorite restaurants, Outback Steakhouse, and had yummy cheesy fries and STEAK.

So all in all, it was a good birthday :)

Stewart Falls and Five-Sevenths

Last weekend for the 24th of July - (Pioneer day, for the Non-Utahns) John's brother Travis came through on his way back home from BYU-Idaho. So we went and hiked Stewart Falls:

It was really pretty peaceful up there and we had fun going down to the bottom and getting really close to the water. Travis even crossed the river at the bottom to the other side.

This weekend we had planned on hiking Timpanogos cave, but when we checked on tickets for the tour, there weren't any left! We were sad! But we read in the BYU newspaper an article on the "Seven Wonders of Provo" (Kind of tacky, I know) so we decided to go around and take a look at what Provo had to offer. ;)

The first one was the totem pole outside the University's Museum of Peoples and Cultures. Neither of us knew it was there! (we tried to make faces to fit in with the totem ha



The next was the obelisk memorial to the US Veterans:


The fourth was a historic tree on center street. It was planted in 1927 and there are supports all underneath the branches to help it stay up. It was really cool!

The fifth was the stone amphitheater that is further down center street. According to some people, everyone and their dog gets their engagements and bridals done there. I'm glad we didn't go along with the trend, even though it is a really pretty place to have pictures :)

The sixth was the cougar outside Lavell Edwards Stadium. I'd never been to see the cougar, we became quick friends...and my noble steed ;)

He and John shared a friendly handshake :)


So that was our adventure. As you might have noticed, that was only 5 of the 7 wonders. The other two are the King Kong Cone (a GINORMOUS ice cream cone) and the Limeade from some random place whose name escapes me. ;) But since we'd just had a big dinner, we didn't want anymore food!! But we had fun with these five :)

Who says you can't play with your food?

So i haven't been able to put these up, but after we made bridges with dave and jessica, we had a LOT of gum drops left over. So we made more structures. ;)

This is John's:
This is mine (I got a little carried away...)

Then tonight I surprised john with three slips of paper, the one he chose would determine what we would do tonight. With pioneer day being tomorrow, we have no work or school! yay!!

So he picked paper #3...which was ICE CREAM SCULPTING!

I tried to build a house...John made a snowman!!

Which ended up looking kind of evil...

So John ate his head. The End.

My skittle roof shingles kept falling off!!

And this is what I ended up with ;)

After the messy art of ice cream sculpture, we found we had time to do another thing on one of the paper slips. The next one john chose was CUCUMBER BOAT RACING!

I named my boat the "Crunchy Captain"

John named his the "Salty Seadog"

We chose only the most faithful of gummi worms to steer our ships

Which promptly capsized as soon as they were put in the water. Oh well. John's came tumbling under the bridge and mine was no where to be found. lost to davy jones' locker....oh well. :)