The Minnesota: Video Games Live

I know that it makes me a world-class geek that I went to listen to the Minnesota Orchestra playing video game music, but in the long run, I'm pretty ok with it. I got Henry tickets for Christmas to this performance, since he's always raving about the music in his favorite video games and I've been wanting to go to the orchestra for awhile. Seemed like a win-win situation! And I have to say that I was impressed.

My sister told me that a lot of composers love playing video game music because they don't have to cater to students who aren't very good at music--they can write music specifically for professionals and make it as hard as they want. A lot of that came through--the music was HARD and very good. Some of the pieces were familiar...from old arcade games that I used to play on my computer to Mario. Others I had never heard, but they were impressively evocative and often really beautiful. The performance was a part of a tour from a few video games composers who are trying to show people that even though they may not take video games seriously, they shouldn't discount the music and art involved as juvenile. For all that, it was still definitely a pops concert--every so often a costumed character would show up, and there were always video game images playing in the background. A few times, members of the audience participated in the show by playing a game while the orchestra played.

All in all, I'm glad I went. Geeky or not, it was a fun night and I heard a lot of great music.

Bon Jovi Concert :)

Thursday Steamboat Willie and I, along with two other good friends (with much better seats!) went to the Bon Jovi concert. We were in the nosebleeds, but it was still worth it--although I wish we had waited to get tickets, so we could have also ended up with the free better tickets that the other two got! I forgot how much fun those concerts are--I'm pretty sure that even for somebody who isn't terribly interested in their music, it would still be a lot of fun. If you do like their music, it's all the better--they put on a good show, usually around two and a half to three hours of just them.

I'd heard some complaints about this tour from Bon Jovi before we went--people who were upset that he didn't play much of his old music, which is all that a lot of people go for. My experience was definitely not that--he played a good mixture. He also played a lot of songs that I hadn't heard before, but that made Steamboat Willie absolutely ecstatic! She'd already been to 9 Bon Jovi concerts (yeah...she really has!) and heard some of her favorite more obscure songs for the first time live. 

Some of my favorite parts of Bon Jovi concerts:

• Well...the music is a pretty obviouis one. He puts on a very good show, plays a lot of songs and obviously loves to perform.
• Watching Jon Bon Jovi dance. He has almost the same lack of skill that I do, but he is much more exuberant about it! (here's a decent example on youtube!)
• Counting mullets and/or bad 80s outfits. This time, we didn't see any mullets and were severely disappointed. Usually, it's a good game!
• Watching weird performance tricks. This time, the drummer played a couple songs on what looked like a birdhouse and the keyboardist stood in between two keyboards and played one with each hand.

Minnesota Melting Pot Class

Monday was my ethnic Minnesota foods class with Kevin Ryan, and it was once again a great class. We learned to make a Hmong stew, a Somalian chicken stew, juicy lucys, Swedish meatballs and a Norwegian apple cake. The class was a lot of fun, the food was incredible, and I felt like I learned a lot so--yesterday I tried to make the jucy lucys. They seemed to be the easiest recipe in the class and whenever I wait for a long time to make the recipes I've learned in a class, I always seem to forget some key steps.

At least, so I thought. After the jucy lucys, I think it might just be that I lack some important skills! I made them inside (which may have been my first mistake) because it was a little too windy for the grill. And they ended up charred on the outside (rather than seared a nice brown) and missing a lot of pieces of hamburger which are still stuck fast to the bottom of my pan. What I learned from this is that it probably is important to use the high-fat hamburger that he asked for, rather than the much leaner ground buffalo that I had in the freezer! So, in another week or so I'll try it again and see if I can improve with the correct hamburger and either a grill or a much cooler pan.

Juicy Lucys
Ideally, this is supposed to be over a grill. Inside, he said to use a very hot pan to sear the meat on the outside. He also said the hot pan is more likely to cook the meat pretty quickly so the cheese doesn't bleed out.

Ingredients
4 slices good quality white sandwich bread
1/2 cup whole milk
1.5 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
3 pounds 85% ground beef
About 12 1" squares cheese, 1/4-1/2 inch thick
8 hamburger buns

Directions

1. Rip the sandwich bread into small pieces and mash with milk and spices in a small bowl until it makes a paste.
2. Mix in hamburger until well mixed. Try not to mash the hamburger too much, or it may become stiff.
3. Form hamburger patties around about 3 squares of cheese, making sure that the patty is evenly distributed on around the cheese and an even thickness.
4. Cook over the grill or in a hot pan with no oil until done. Try not to burn to a crisp like I did!

Red Pepper Bagel Sandwiches...finally!

After a week of alternately being busy and fighting with an unpleasant case of food poisoning, I'm finally ready to write about my last vegetarian experiment. And since I made it on Monday, it's about time! I'm really torn between French and Mexican food for this month's experiment. I had every intention of working with French food, so I can really use the cookbook I got from my sister for Chistmas and do some good experimenting. I've heard that this guy wrote some of the best cookbooks for learning French food, which definitely interests me. Also, I've never really eaten much French food, and I'd like to have a general idea of what's going on when I head over to France this fall. But, a lot of the food that really appeals to me in the book is a little beyond my level of need at the moment...as much as I would like to cook a 3 pound chicken every week, I really don't need that much food! And I LOVE Mexican food an unnatural amount. So, I'll do some pondering and hopefully come up with an idea before I go grocery shopping!

I made roasted red pepper bagel sandwiches for my experiment this week, and they were surprisingly both a lot better and a lot more filling than I expected. I made them from a recipe from Cooking Light magazine and followed it pretty close, but did make a few changes. First, I served it on a normal sized bagel--I was looking for dinner, not appetizers! The first time I made them, I did include the garlic cloves. When I made them again for lunches at work, I left that part out so I wouldn't kill everyone around me with the garlic smell! My only objection to these is using the canned roasted red peppers--they're convenient, which is wonderful, but I had a hard time getting over how slimy they looked and felt pulling them out of the jar. They tasted great, but each time I took I bite I was expecting a mouth full of slime.

Roasted Red Pepper Bagel Sandwiches
My version. These are great, quick and surprisingly filling.

Ingredients

• Plain bagels
• Fat free cream cheese
• 1 jar roasted red peppers (or roast your own to get around the slimy look!)
• 1 clove garlic, minced (optional--when I did this, I used a whole clove on one sandwich and it was good and spicy!)
• Black pepper

Directions

1. Toast the bagel.
2. Meanwhile, combine enough cream cheese for 1 bagel (about 2 big spoonfulls), minced garlic and black pepper and whip them together until well mixed.
3. Coat both sides of the bagel with the cream cheese mix.
4. Add the red pepper.

It's really that fast and simple, and tastes a lot better than I expected with the simple ingredients. Yum.

Happy Easter to everyone tomorrow! Enjoy your jellybeans and deviled eggs :)

Basketball and Celebrations

I went to my first ever professional basketball game tonight. At least in Minnesota, I have to agree with what I've been told--it's kind of fun to go to a Timberwolves game when it's free. Even though I have absolutely no interest in basketball, the entertainment between quarters is fun, the atmosphere is interesting and there's always some good people watching. On top of that, with baseball season coming up, it was kind of therapeutic to watch a game when I really didn't care one way or the other about the outcome. And finally, we had some pretty impressive seats for being free.

Not a lot of adventures this week, but my self-imposed month without eating out is over. Since Henry passed a big certification test, we also went out to celebrate and had some of the best cheesecake I've had recently at Rock Bottom Brewery. They don't have the nutrition facts for that on their website yet and I'm pretty sure I'm glad of that!

This upcoming week doesn't promise a lot of adventures--I'm probably going to be pretty busy between extra work, trying to enjoy the spring weather and maybe trying to get a few things done.

Food Experiments: Tomato Pesto Pasta

I always think that I like pesto until I actually eat it. It sounds and looks good, but when I finally eat it, it's just too oily for something so green and healthy looking! Today, I decided to try it again with a new recipe, hoping that the tomatoes would make it a little better. It worked to a point--I liked the taste of the pesto better, but I would still prefer to make it next time with less oil. I got the recipe from Cooking Light and adapted it to what I had in my kitchen.

Tomato Pesto Pasta with Feta Cheese

Ingredients

• 1/4 box fettucine
• 3/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes in oil, drained (next time, I would try using the dried sun-dried tomatoes with a tablespoon or so  of olive oil)
• 1/4 cup fresh basil leaves
• small handful chopped walnuts
• 3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese, divided
• 3 cloves fresh garlic, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Directions

1. Cook pasta according to package directions.
2. While pasta is cooking, combine tomatoes, basil, walnuts, 1/4 cup feta, garlic, salt and black pepper in a food processor. Process until finely chopped.
3. When pasta is finished cooking, drain and reserve 1 cup of water. Mix reserved water with the tomato mixture and whisk together. Add pasta and mix until coated.
4. Top with remaining 1/2 cup of feta.

Food Experiments: Slow Cooker Risotto

I don't think I've ever had risotto before, so I can't really judge if the recipe I made just turned out badly or if I just don't like risotto. Either way, I now have a big container of weird cheesy rice mush in my fridge that I've been trying to convince myself I should eat for about three days now. I hate wasting perfectly good food, and this really isn't that bad, but...it just reminds me of overcooked cheesy oatmeal. And when I have other, perfectly appetizing food around (even if it is Kraft mac and cheese or something that will take me another hour to cook), that somehow always wins over cheesy oatmeal.

I can't really pass judgement on the recipe itself for several reasons. One, I'm really not sure if I like risotto. There's a good chance that this tastes like it's supposed to and I just made an experiment that wasn't good for me. Two, I started this in a hurry after oversleeping one morning and didn't see that it was only supposed to cook for 2 hours, not 4, so it really WAS overcooked. Outside of my carelessness, though, this was a really easy recipe that was very quick to throw together in the morning. If I were to try it again, I'd make sure I was home so it didn't sit on the warm setting all day and possibly try a different type of cheese (I think mozzerella or gruyere or any other white cheese would probably work equally well and I might like the taste better). And I probably wouldn't make it for the night after a work party that was largely based around a food competition, because this just can't stack up to potato skins, homemade bread and honey butter, or mint brownies.

After this week, I'm starting to realize a little more that being a vegetarian must be hard. I'm having a really hard time finding recipes that aren't either really difficult, full of expensive ingredients, or full of eggplant and/or cabbage (yech). Hopefully next week will be a little easier!