A Weekly Serving - 1/22/2011

Yay for the weekend! It's a special weekend here in Chicago since our beloved Chicago Bears is going up against our northern neighbors, the Greenbay Packers for an NFL playoff game. But aside from that, this past week was still full of culinary adventures despite our restaurant kitchen being out of commission. More on that later but...

Here's what I cooked up in the kitchen this past week...

Pina Colada Bread Pudding

7 Tasty Gameday Chicken Wing Recipes you can try out… 

Stuffed Pork Chops

Stuffed Pork Chops with blue cheese, roasted red peppers and spinach...
need I say more?!

Leek & Garlic Rice Pilaf

A tasty spin on the usual rice pilaf… 

Here are the recipe collections I've posted this past week...

7 Tasty Gameday Chicken Wing Recipes

With so many Chicken Wing Recipes to choose from, you'll be ready for the big game!

10 Finger Lickin' Good Rib Recipes
Try out one of the 10 Finger Lickin’ Good Rib Recipes for the Superbowl…

My weekly musings on Family, Food and Fun...

Family - After the fire we experienced at the restaurant last week, I've had a chance to catch up on family time with my 2 favorite boys, Louis & Joel. We spent some time with my parents up in the burbs and I had more time in my home kitchen cooking and baking at my leisure, which is always a good thing! After being home more this week, I've been able to notice how quickly Joel is moving. The past month or so, he'd crawl slowly on his own and needed some prodding. But now, it's all so different. He's crawling much more on his own and is even building up speed. Joel's also been reaching more to pull himself up and over things, like his pack & play, crib, chairs and sofa. So now we're kind of in the middle of the crawling/climbing stage. We've also been working on some gestures. I wish I would've done baby sign language early on and stuck with it consistently but oh well. However, Joel's got "up up" (to be picked up) and uses it daily. Another one he has down is waving one arm for "goodbye". The most recent one he learned is "touchdown" for the big Bears vs. Packers game tomorrow. Here's his weekly pic, where he's now 37 weeks old...

Food/Restaurant News - This week was spent with special guests from California - Tita Leena & Tito Bebot. They are relatives of my partner, Ron. Tita Leena & Tito Bebot shared with us some recipes for dishes we'll be including in our restaurant menu. Another tidbit is that my partners and I are making homemade Filipino sausage (longanisa) and Filipino cured pork (tocino) to make in house and sell in our grocery store. I'm working on taking it further and selling these items wholesale to some Filipino grocery stores in the far north suburbs of Chicago where I'm originally from. I've got about 6 stores in line who are anxious to try our product and most likely will sell it at their retail stores. I'm super excited since one of those stores is a large supermarket that my mom helped build out a Filipino grocery (produce, dry & frozen) section for.   

Fun - As for fun this past week, I had a chance to spend more time with my favorite boys. We're gearing up for the Bears vs. Packers game tomorrow and will be watching the game at our friends' place.

Hope you all enjoy your weekend and have a great week ahead!... Go Bears!