Trivia

Yesterday was a great opportunity for a lazy Sunday afternoon. I got home from Journey Kids at about 1:15, made us a quick pre-prepped lunch, put together the soup for tomorrow night, and napped. The zucchini, corn, and basil fusili was a great way to use up vegetables from the garden. I've been saving this recipe from Gourmet magazine for almost a year. We loved it so much and I'm sure it will be on a more frequent rotation. The recipe is here. I used whole wheat fusili and made a higher vegetable to pasta ratio, and it was fabulous.

We've been wanting to check out the trivia at Newstead Tower Public House on Sunday nights for a while. We're semi-regulars at Tuesday night trivia and since we've had limited success, we thought that Sunday night Americana pop culture trivia would be better suited for us. We invited our fun friends the Shooks and a great time was had by all. The buckets of Stag, PBR, and Fat Tire cans were half price and we're not known to turn down a cheap beer (or six).

We discussed our trivia "dream teams", tree limbs in unfortunate places, mowing the lawn on the Lord's day, and Lucas' amazing knowledge of King Edward VI. We battled to the end and prevailed with a 2nd place finish! So what if there were only 4 teams, we still ended up in the top 50%. Our prize was a four-pack of what else, more beer.

I love the first picture because Nate is clearly very excited about this new beer. He told us all that it has triple the IBU's of Budweiser and that it should be very hoppy. Nobody could be more anxious to try it!

In Saint Louis tradition, we finished the night with a stop at Ted Drewes. It was a great ending to a wonderfully low-key weekend.

P.S. Check out the gorgeous flowers blooming in our backyard!

Summer dinner

It's summer in Saint Louis, it's 99 degrees, and it's time for grillin' and chillin'. Today that meant burgers on the grill, my famous corn salad, watermelon, and root beer. I spent all afternoon in the kitchen making and prepping meals for the week. The forecast is busy nights and several meals with friends. We've got a lot of tasty dishes on deck for this week! It all started with me shucking corn in the living room (the best place to shuck when it's 99 degrees).

Much chopping, caramelizing, and baking ensued. Note the fresh from our garden basil and the typically overflowing compost bowl. The results were fabulous!

The burgers are topped with bacon, pepper jack cheese, peppedew peppers, caramelized red onions, and mayo. They were ridiculous. Ridiculously good, that is.

The corn salad recipe is here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/fresh-corn-salad-recipe/index.html

I make some small tweaks to my version so it can stay my famous corn salad. It cannot be beat and tastes like summer on a fork.

The proof is in the gigantic bite.

Is this topical?

This is a blog. This is the first post. I'm glad it's over so we can get down to business.