Cooking and Family’ing

adminbest friends, Corey Lambert, Family, flatwater, kitchen clambake, luxbar, Magic Hat Brewery, Man Friend, summer cooking, Uncategorized, Volare%s Comments

Exhibit A: Hazel Wegrich.  93. Grandmother. All-Around Amazing Lady.

My 93 year old grandmother got on a place for the first time in years and ventured from Florida to Chicago this past weekend.  A good dinner at Volare (minus the rave that was happening across the street- strobe lights and glow sticks don’t exactly say “welcome to Chicago, let’s have a nice, classy dinner”),  lunch at Luxbar, brunch at Flatwater and a kitchen clambake at our apartment made for a lovely weekend.

I love to cook.  Feeding the people I love is, to me, another way to love them.  With my mom and grandmother in town, it was only fitting that 3 of my best friends came over for dinner.  I am so lucky to have people in Chicago who are every bit as family as those as I am related to by gentics.  It’s also a lot of fun to be in a relationship with someone who loves entertaining as much as I do.  After flipping through The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, Man-Friend and I decided on a Kitchen Clambake–potatoes, kielbasa, shrimp, clams, mussels, salmon and crab steamed in white wine and, because Man-Friend got creative, Miller Lite.

Exhibit B: Our pot was not big enough for the mass amounts of seafood we bought.  So we improvised.

Since we have yet to put together our 4th kitchen table chair, we brought over the ottoman and all crowded around the table, digging into the caprese salad, cracking open crab legs, reaching for more mussels, breaking off pieces of delicious crusty bread.

Exhibit C: Finished product.

It was my favorite kind of meal, the kind that are filled with people I adore, tons of food, wine, “remember when” stories and last for hours.  It turns out that exactly 6 years ago, Corey, Amanda, Mike, Linda and I were in car on our way to New York City.  It was an amazing time in our friendship, a time when we were still young enough to have nothing else to do but be together.  That trip will forever be one of my favorite memories.  It was really special to be with those same people (minus Married Mike), celebrating the exciting changes that have happened recently in our adult lives and belly laughing over being 19 and stranded in Long Island at 4am.

There’s a month left of summer and I want it to be filled with nights just like last Saturday- cooking, story sharing, glass toasting and being with family–both the one I was born into and the one I have been lucky enough to have become a part of along the way.

Volare

adminbaby cow, Italian, Man Friend, pasta, Signature Lounge on the 96th, Uncategorized, Volare, wine%s Comments

I haven’t done a restaurant review in awhile and after an amazing dinner at Volare last Saturday night, it is high time.

I’ve walked by Volare a dozen times but since it’s not much to look at from the outside (c’mon–you know we all judge books by their covers on occasion), I’ve never pushed to go there.  But after countless recommendations from my parents and from my man friend’s colleagues, we decided to make it the dinner portion of our old school Chicago date.  After drinks at the Signature Lounge on the 96th Floor of the Hancock Tower (best view of the city is out of the women’s restroom, btw), we went a few blocks south to Volare, located at 201 E. Grand Ave.

Walking in, we weren’t so much greeted by the hosts but by waiters running in and out of the busiest kitchen I’ve ever seen.  Waiting for our table was almost painful, watching dish after amazing smelling dish go by.  To say I struggle making decisions about ordering food is an understatement but even my man friend had a hard time at Volare because everything we had seen run by us was just mouth watering.  The veal medallion with porcini risotto (for him) and the frutti di mare (for me) were the final decisions and I’d say we hit the jackpot.  Well, you’ll have to take his word on the veal–even though I was bribed with lots of things I want in exchange for taking a bite, you will never catch me eating baby cow.  No way.  But the calamari was uber tender, the shrimp ginormous, the seabass perfection and the pasta was perfectly al dente (my big pet peeve with Italian restaurants) so we left very full and happy. Topped off with a bottle of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and we were in love.  With Volare.

We always say we want to go back to places just for some wine and to maybe split a dish but with Volare, I know neither of us are going to be willing to share.

High Five of the Day:  http://smittenkitchen.com/ I follow them on Twitter (ninainthechi) and now that the Green City Market is up and going on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, I can’t wait to turn all the fabulous fresh things I buy there into the fabulous fresh recipes Smitten Kitchen gives me.  First on my list is absolutely Homemade Pop Tarts.  Go ahead, start salivating now.