Save your vanilla beans after you scrape out the good stuff inside for another recipe, place the rest of the vanilla bean into a container filled with sugar. Shake the container every so often. After some time, you will see some vanilla flecks in the sugar. Feel free to substitute with some recipes. Donuts and cookies work but a pinch of vanilla sugar in tofu – I don’t think so.
I love weekends. I can make a hot breakfast instead of eating yogurt or another portable breakfast item at work. Now is the best time to make this breakfast and it is apple season. I want to go apple picking but I am not available until next weekend. I am afraid there will be no apples left by the time I can go. In the mean time, I am getting fresh apples from the farm stand I go to. Use your fresh apples to make this.
Apple Cinnamon Steel Cut Oatmeal
Adapted from Alton Brown’s Steel Cut Oatmeal
Serves: 1, but easily doubled, tripled…
Ingredients:
1 tsp. Margarine or butter
1/3 cup of steel cut oatmeal
1 cup of water
1 apple, cubed thin
1/3 cup of milk
1 tsp honey
Cinnamon
In a medium saucepot, melt the margarine on medium heat. Pour the steel cut oatmeal into the saucepot to toast for two minute. During this time, place the water in a microwave safe cup and turn on for until it boils or just use boiling water. Lower heat to simmer for approximately ten minutes without stirring. Add milk and apples and cook for another ten minutes. Stir occasionally during this time. Stir in honey. Shut off heat. Add cinnamon to taste. Pour into a bowl and enjoy!
Like most people, I have a lot of bread lying around for various reasons: bought too much or did not eat a lot of bread in the previous week. Rather than throwing it out, make it into breadcrumbs.
Homemade Breadcrumbs
Preheat oven to 350F. Slice bread/rolls into slices. Place slices on baking sheet. Toast each side of the for three minutes. Cool on baking sheet. Rip slices into smaller pieces and place in blender or food processor and turn on until desired crumb size.
In August, I was able to take a long weekend to Las Vegas with my husband. Right there, it was a very different trip as if it is was a bachelorette party. Using our American Express points, we were able to able to score our flight and hotel for free. Little did we know when I planned the trip, it was going to be restaurant week. There were great deals to be found.
STAY: Palazzo – The Palazzo hotel is connected to the Venetian hotel at the north end of the strip. It is across the street from the Wynn and a mall. I noted to my husband, that this is one of the only hotels in a city that I actually never wanted to leave. Everything I needed for a relaxing vacation was part of this resort. The room was huge, approximately the size of our first apartment. We were able to use the pool at Palazzo or Venetian. We tended to choose the Palazzo side, as it was not as active as the Venetian side. It should be noted that each side also had a day club. TAO Beach Club was on the Venetian side.
EAT: Obviously, the most important part of the trip! Due to the great deals of restaurant week and not wanting to leave the hotel, I did violate my main rule – Do not eat at a restaurant that you can have in the city.
Lavo: We had brunch here our first day here. Being a guest of the hotel, we received bottomless mimosas (nothing wrong with this) and 30% off. Hubster had a Lobster Benedict and I had blueberry pancakes. Look at these beauties.
Michael Mina: My parents ate here a few years ago. All they have spoke about Vegas, is this meal. Being restaurant week, we got a three course meal for $50, along with wine pairings for an additional $25. I had miso cod, which was not as salty as it could be. My husband found a wine that he loved that he would have never considered before.
Hubby didn’t think he ate or drank enough after this meal. On our way back to the Palazzo from the Bellagio, we stopped off at B&B Burger and Beer. Hubby had a huge burger along with a chocolate milkshake made with chocolate beer.
Morels French Steakhouse & Bistro: We needed a restaurant that would allow children for brunch as we met up with some friends who relocated to Vegas. Sometimes, this is a hard feat. Their restaurant week deal was a three course meal for $20. Unfortunately, there were no drink specials. I had a stuffed French Toast with mascarpone cheese.
B&B Ristorante: Four Batali and Bastianch courses for $50 along with unlimited Fruitano. I’m there. Each course was better than the other. I ate some braised beef, which is very rare for me. It was very good. Each course was so much food that by the third course (main meal), I was almost full. The apricot and peach sorbets were very light at the end.
Wicked Spoon: This buffet gets decent reviews. They tried hard to make fancier dishes. We went for Monday lunch.
CUT: This steakhouse has a bar menu that you can get along with the steaks by the bar. We ordered a bunch of small plates. Each dish was very good. The only bad thing is that they did not participate in restaurant week.
Before we left we went to Emeril Lagasse’s Stadium. This restaurant is a stadium seating of couches along with lots of televisions to watch sports.
It has been a full month since my last post! Where did the month go? September and October are crazy months as I am a school psychologist. I spent a lot of the beginning of the month making sure my school’s special education students were in the right class, including the transfer students. Then, I got the flu shot. Most people would be fine, but not me. Forty-eight hours later, a sinus infection came. Three weeks later, I am finally feeling almost like my old self. All of this in the middle of the Jewish holidays.
Noteworthy, my Ebinger’s Blackout Cake made it to DessertStalking’s blog as one of the four chocolate cakes of the week. Thanks DessertStalking!
Stay tuned to suburbanwhisk for more posts to come!