The RELAUNCH!

What an exciting day this is going to be for everyone!  This is my relaunch of TJOTJOC!  Just what you've all been waiting for!

So, here's the rundown.

Schedule from now on:  I'm going to post at least a post a week.  It's very possible I'm going to write these all at once but I'm going to schedule them so they come out periodically.

Why the break?  I have had a lot of personal issues but on top of that, I just lost my passion for blogging.  I still was cooking but I managed to get so spectacularly behind I couldn't even imagine how I would ever catch up.  And that bogged me down.  And then I just gave up.  I had an entire Thanksgiving's worth of recipes on a phone that was stolen.  I was downtrodden.

So what changed?  My cousin, Erica, made the point that I could do whatever I want to catch up because it's my blog.  I can just summarize the recipes, I can post them in detail, I can cook them again.  I can do whatever I want because this blog is totally mine.  And that was empowering!  So I'm just going to start blogging about what I'm cooking and do exactly that to catch up--write up some old posts, summarize other, and just totally recook a few.

AND WHAT'S NEW?  Much like some of you, I've fallen in love with subscription boxes.  I actually switched out my bar budget for a subscription box budget (much healthier in the long run!).  I'm going to post about them.  If you like this, great!  If you hate it, skip them!  Simple.  The first week is going to be subscription box heavy but don't worry--the food will come back and be about 75% of the posts.

What else is new?  I've updated all the pages up top!  Make sure to comment and let me know what you think of the changes.  I'm excited and I hope you are too.

I love you all!  Thank you for sticking with me through the years!

For those of you confused about the point of this blog aka My Second Nasty Comment

As many of you know, I've been powering through finishing my PhD but I have a ton of blog posts to write so March should be a big month for TJOTJOC!

But what motivated me to write this post was a comment I just received:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Fettuccine with Salmon and Asparagus (p. 327)":

this is not a recipe. you kind of just cooked something and it seems alot like this http://www.thejoykitchen.com/recipe.lasso?recipe=1180 but you left out real instructions. thief

I found this comment rather hilarious. If you have managed to not figure out the whole point of this blog, I assume through functional illiteracy, I am cooking my way through the cookbook The Joy of Cooking. See those numbers in the parenthesis? That is the page number the recipe appears on in The Joy of Cooking. Sometimes I link the recipe back to the very website you quoted, although I haven't gone back and done it for all recipes. I don't post the recipe because THAT would be thievery, IMO, since you should just go buy the book yourself.

And, if you feel the need to "out" me, feel free. Josh and I enjoyed the laugh this morning.

Bacon sundae from Denny's

While looking through my pictures, I was absolutely shocked I had forgotten to post about something as monumental as the bacon sundae at Denny's! The bacon sundae was the pinnacle (in my opinion) of Denny's awesome Baconalia (very possibly the best name ever). I went with the intrepid Kristin. While not as secret as the Mc1035, it was definitely as bizarre.



Of course, I loved it. Bacon+maple syrup+ice cream=dreamy bliss for Jessica. The maple complimented both the ice cream and the bacon perfectly, the creaminess of the vanilla ice cream was a great foil for the crunchiness of the bacon, I thought it was amazing. I would make it for myself at home. I love bacon. I LOVE BACON! If you love bacon, eat a bacon sundae.

Would you eat a bacon sundae?

Jasper Fforde and Euclid Hall

I love, love, love the author Jasper Fforde. His books are almost in a genre of their own and are rather difficult to explain or categorize. Essentially, in his Thursday Next series, characters live in a world similar to ours (but not the same) where trained people can actually enter (and change) books. If you love literature and love the English language (and especially if you like wordplay and puns), you will love his books. They are clever and amazing. I have been a superfan for ten years now and convinced most of my friends and family to love him too.

So when I heard he was coming to Denver again (I saw him 4 years ago), I knew I had to go. Josh and I decided to make a nice little one day trip out of it.

Jasper Fforde and I:



Exciting!

I'm sure you are thinking "Fascinating, Jessica, but what the heck does this have to do with food?".

Josh and I decided that we would just stay the night in Denver and go to a great meal. My friend Kristin, an amazing local restaurant critic, gave me a bunch of recommendations. One of them was Euclid Hall. I looked at the online menu, was immediately intrigued, and chose it.

Euclid Hall is one of those truly interesting restaurants where the food is very creative and very delicious.

We would never have found this place on our own. The building was built in 1893 and has been everything from a Mason hall to a high-end brothel. It doesn't look like a restaurant. We walked in and couldn't quite figure out what to do--the area we walked in to was obviously a bar, there was no obvious restaurant area, and there was no hostess. We waited around awkwardly for a few minutes and then followed a waitress up some stairs. Ah! There is the restaurant! The waiter gave us attitude for wandering up on our own (annoying) but looked down and noticed the hostess was in fact missing, which improved his attitude.

We started with a couple drinks. My martini was amazing. Euclid Hall must have a mixologist on staff because there are some truly innovative drinks utilizing house made mixers, like maraschino syrup.



When I see something truly novel on a menu, I want to eat it. And, as I work in the meat industry, when I see a truly novel variety meat on the menu, I REALLY have to get it. So Crispy Buaffalo-Style Pig Ears were our appetizer.



The pig ears reminded me of sweetbreads. The texture is...odd. The word "mucous-y" probably isn't completely right but it's not completely wrong either. They tasted good, once we we got over the texture, but I'm still willing to leave the pig ears to my dogs as chew toys.

Euclid hall grinds their own sausage but, more importantly, they pickle their own pickles! We got the pickle sampler which included sweet bread and butter pickles, hops infused pickles, "hot, spicy, and very sincere pickles", and a seasonal pickle:



These were so good. I love pickles (remember, I'm part of a pickle-of-the-month club). And I LOVED these pickles. Each variety was totally different and equally interesting. The bread and butter pickles were sweet and spicy, the hops-infused pickles had just enough hops flavor, and the spicy pickles had a great multi-dimensional spiciness that many hot pickles lack.

I also love poutine. I think it's the best part of Canada every time I go there. So spotting poutine on a menu in Denver? Super exciting. They had three varieties and I picked the wild mushroom version ("Wild mushroom, porcini gravy, Wisconsin cheddar curds"):



Delicious. The exact right amount of savory gravy, perfect curds, a true winner. Sometimes poutine can be too salty and this one wasn't, which was great.

I also ordered the caraway spatzle:



I adore spatzle and this was a really good version, although it had an oddly herbaceous taste. It was also a HUGE portion for a side. I didn't come close to eating it all.

Josh ordered the grilled prime tri-tip steak, which came with cast iron roasted vegetables and a black garlic aioli:



The steak was perfectly cooked and tender and the vegetables were also incredibly good (and well seasoned).

If I see "S'mores" in a dessert, I can't pass it up. So I ordered the S'mores pot de creme ("house made graham crackers and marshmallows").



The pot de creme had creamy pudding base, a toasted marshmallow top, and the homemade graham cracker was terrific. I hadn't known what I was missing by not having tried homemade graham crackers in the past.

Josh got the sourdough waffle ice cream sandwich ("salted butterscotch ice cream, praline".



It, like everything else, was delicious. Frankly, it's hard to go wrong with a salted dessert.

The meal was truly terrific. The ambiance was awesome too, it made a perfect date night. I absolutely want to go back soon. If I had a rating system, Euclid Hall would get the perfect score. It isn't even as expensive as you would expect. I think our whole meal was only around $70 or so.


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The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

If you only read for the food, skip this post! If you hate (or don't care about) Harry Potter, skip this post!

My grandparents have lived in Florida for most of my life. I go there with my mom every year for Christmas. This year, my good friend and college roommate Laura started a post-doc in Florida and I was extremely excited to see her--we hadn't seen each other in years. I threw out the idea to visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure. I knew Laura and I are both Harry Potter fans, the WWoHP just opened (and it's cool to see things before everyone else has), and, as someone who has been to the FL theme parks a zillion times, Islands of Adventure is the only one I've ever truly liked.

So we set off!

If you decide to go to the WWoHP, expect huge crowds. Honestly, we were there when the park opened, went straight to get our ticket to WWoHP, and still didn't get a time to enter until four hours later or so.

This December was surprisingly cold in FL. The day we went to WWoHP was around 30. Were the two of us wearing coats? No. A fleece for Laura and a sweatshirt for me. What do we decide to do while we wait?

Ride water rides. That's right, we rode the first water ride while it was around freezing. Not surprisingly, there were no lines. Honest to god, not a single person in line.



We figured we were already wet, so we might as well go on a second water ride. I men, we couldn't get wetter, right?



Wrong. Very, very wrong. We were so soaking wet that people were pointing at us and laughing.

We were absolutely freezing so we went in to one of the cafes to warm up. They had reasonably priced and warming beer:



Finally it was Harry Potter time! I don't have any great pictures of the terrific moving pictures on the walls of Hogwarts, the terrific sorting hat, all of that. If you are a Harry Potter fan, this is a must-go.

There was just something awesome about seeing the Hogsmeade sign:



Hogwarts in the background!



How perfect were the Beauxbaton girls? I can totally see Fleur.



And Durmstrang, of course. I don't know where they found these guys but they were perfect!



When I went to Islands of Adventure a dozen years ago, when it first opened, there was a dueling dragon ride. That ride has now been rebranded as the Triwizard Tournament ride and it was full of these great signs:



Gorgeous view, right? I felt like I was walking to Hogsmeade. And my butterbeer!



What about the butterbeer?



Both Laura and I were excited about the butterbeer. And this must have shown through because we were asked so many questions about it by random tourists it was amazing. Honestly, I bet we answered a hundred questions. We were like the Butterbeer representatives. Is it hot? (No, you can get it cold or frozen. We stated that we were already frozen so we picked cold). Is it alcoholic? (Sadly, no, it's "beer" like "root beer"). Where can we get it? (Right by the entrances). What does it taste like? (A lot like cream soda and butterscotch). Is it good? (Surprisingly, yes!). For some reason I thought it would be hot but no.

While we were walking around we saw a big sign that proclaimed the Mythos Resturant to have been voted "Best theme park restaraunt" by some theme park magazine. That was good enough for us! Note to future visiters--if you want to go, make sure to make a reservation. We didn't and we waited FOREVER.

Our meals:




These were actually really, really good. And that's a statement I've never been able to make about a theme park meal before. Plus it was relatively cheap. I figure that if I manage not to sign away my first born at a theme park, the day was a win. I've never seen risotto on a theme park menu before so I was impressed.

Super, super fun day. If you love Harry Potter and ever are in Florida, go to Islands of Adventure. It was expensive but totally worth it.

New puppy! Pickles of the month! And contest winner!

This is a non-cooking post, so if you only read for the cooking, skip this post!

Josh and I added a new family member to the household! About a month ago we got a little papillon puppy that we named Lestat. We figured he is French, obstinate, and naughty, so it's the perfect name.



Our other dog, Duchess, didn't know what to think about him. Duch is only 20 lbs, Lestat was only 4 lbs when we got him:



Now THAT is a cute face!



Lestat thrives on danger:



See, he's already helping me blog:



Yes, I often blog wearing an apron and in that giant mess. I will admit it. It took all of my self control not to bore you with a thousand more doggie pictures.

Josh bought me a Pickle-of-the-month club membership for Christmas. It is, quite possibly, the best gift ever. I LOVE of-the-month clubs (he got me a puzzle subscription a few years ago).

February's pickles were:



Loved them both. The Really Chunky Dills with Garlic were extremely crisp and garlicky. The Pickles and Peppers were incredibly sweet and hot. I love bread and butter pickles and these were bread and butter pickles kicked up a few notches. I loved them. I need more pickles!

I had never heard of Tony Packo's in Ohio before receiving these pickles but between these delicious pickles and their awesome looking menu, I would love to eat there. There are SO many items on the menu that look great. Have any of you been there before? Apparently they were Klinger's favorite restaurant on MASH (slightly before my time) because the actor that played him Jamie Farr, was a huge fan.

Finally, the winner of the $35 CSN GC is....

Drumroll please...

True Random Number Generator Min: Max: Result: 21

SHARON! She has been notified. Congrats, Sharon! Hopefully more contests to come!