Happy birthday, Mike!

Mike's birthday was last Saturday (3/27). Since he usually tells me what to give him, I can only surprise him by making a little something extra. In the past, I have baked him cakes, cupcakes and other treats (since this is where my forte lies), but this year, I wanted to do something a little different. I decided to try to make ice cream cake!

My original idea was to use Phillies Graham Slam ice cream in the cake. It's a specialty flavor made by Turkey Hill and it is SO GOOD. Accodring to the Turkey Hill website, it is "a concoction of graham "phlavored" ice cream swirled with graham cracker ripple and topped off with choco marshmallow cups." Trust me, this stuff is awesome. We ate it non-stop two summers ago, and then last summer for whatever reason we couldn't find it anywhere. A few weeks ago I saw a carton in my local Acme and picked it up. My brother and I finished it in less than 2 days - no joke. So I had high hopes that Acme would be stocking on this ice cream flavor all summer, but when I went to find it to make this cake, it wasn't there! Instead, there were TWO Yankees flavors available, which seems like kind of a slap in the face for all the Phillies fans. I live in Northern Delaware, which is Philles/Eagles country, so two NY team ice creams? Zero Phillies ice creams? Doesn't seem quite right.

The point of this short rambling was that I ended up choosing cookies n' cream as the ice cream flavor. I also picked up a box of yellow cake mix and a carton of Cool Whip (or rather, teh generic Acme Whipped Topping). This is the final product in all its glory:


And this is what the inside looks just so you can see the ice cream-cake layers.


Despite the shock and awe reaction I received, the cake wasn't hard to make. It was, however, time consuming. I made the cake one night, let it cool, and then put it in the freezer overnight. Then, I cut the cake into three slices and made everything even. By the way, frozen cake is much easier to cut than non-frozen cake, so I found that if you are trying to even out the top and sides, the cake is just easier to cut and trim when it's frozen. In any case, the ice cream has to be softened; I just let it sit out for about 30 minutes or so. When the cake slices were done, I spread the ice cream on top evenly and then topped it with another layer of cake. Since at that point, the ice cream is really soft and getting runny, I put it into the freezer and let it set for about an hour. I did the same thing for the second ice cream layer. Finally I coated the sides and top with Cool Whip and decorated with blue gel frosting stuff. That went into the freezer as well. I found that covering up the Cool Whipped sides with wax paper made the cake much easier to handle. The hardest part of this whole thing? Transporting the cake from my place in Delaware to Mike's place in Philly. It's a 40 minute drive and I left it on the floor of the passenger's side with the air conditioning on blast. Subsequently, my feet were freezing as well, but at least everyone enjoyed the cake!

The best meal that I ever made

I really love food. I love to eat, and I love to cook (which probably stems from my love of eating). When we get married, Mike is looking forward to me making meals for him, rather than going through his weekly rotation of take-out restaurants.

A couple of years ago, my brother gave me Think Like A Chef by Tom Colcchio (you might know him as the head judge on Top Chef). It's a neat book because instead of just throwing out recipes, it discusses some basic French cooking techniques and uses recipes to demonstrate how those techniques work. The later portions of the book show you how a single ingredient can be prepared in different ways and how you can combine them with other ingredients to make a variety of dishes. It's just a really informative and well-organized book.

Every Valentine's Day, I make dinner because the restaurants are packed and the meals are overpriced. I decided to make braised short ribs one year because it's a staple in every nice French restaurant and I was interested to make it for myself. So I deferred to Tom Colcchio to make the braised short ribs, and the final result was superb. To this day Mike still says it's the single best thing I ever cooked. I paired the short ribs with garlic mashed potatoes and green beans that were blanched and then sauteed in garlic and butter.

One warning ... the recipe for braised short ribs on p56 calls for Brown Chicken Stock (p70), and the recipe for Brown Chicken Stock calls for White Chicken Stock (p69). So, if you don't make the stocks in advance, this dish could take days to make. For me, I made the Brown Chicken Stock two nights ahead and I made the braised short ribs the night before Valentine's Day. Apparently, the meat should sit in the broth overnight and soak up the moisture. Then, I did the cooking for the sides the night of. I didn't make the White Chicken Stock because I cheated a little and just used canned chicken stock instead, which worked well enough. Even without the white chicken stock, there was a lot of cooking involved.

About a year later, Mike and I went to Tom Colchhio's Craft in NYC, and we tasted the braised short ribs there. Unfortunately, mine couldn't compare. I guess I still have a lot to learn. By the way, the food at Craft was pretty awesome; we had the best gnocchi I have ever tasted there, so I would highly recommend having a meal there if you can.

This is the story of us.

Year One.

We met in September 1999 when we moved into our dorm rooms our freshman year of college. We happened to be assigned to rooms that were right next door to one another, and Mike was one of the first people that I met in college. Since we were both in the engineering school, we ended up taking a lot of classes together, and as nerdy as it sounds, we got to be good friends because of class. We walked to class together and did homework together. (Note - we never studied together because Mike is a lot smarter than I am. He just wrote a bunch of equations on a sheet of paper and called it studying. I actually read the book and did extra problems to prepare for exams. He still got better grades than I did, anyway.)

I don't know how we actually started dating. Our mutual friend, RJ told me one day that he could tell that Mike liked me a lot. I decided to test this theory by asking him into doing my physics lab homework, and he did it without any hesitation. I could just be vain in thinking this, but I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't have done homework for just anyone.

I think the big moment came when he awkwardly asked me to go out with him, and I said sure. I don't remember when it was or how it happened. All I know is that we never really stopped dating after that.


Year Two.

I spent a good deal of the year watching Mike and Brian play Tony Hawk Pro-skater 2. How our relationship lasted beyond this year still bewilders me to this day.

Year Three.

I spent the better part of the year watching the tv show, The Practice. For some reason, it was always on tv in 3227 St. Paul St. where Mike lived with 4 other people. And yet, they watched this show maybe 3 times a day every day for a year. However, at this point, I lasted a year watching Mike play skateboarding video games so The Practice was a big step up.

Year Four.

We moved to the Subway House, which was a set of apartments situated above the new Subway (the sandwich place). This year made me have a strange aversion to Subway for the longest time. To this day, when I smell the nasty bread that they make there, I just want to vomit. That smell wafted up into our apartments, and we smelled it all the time while we were living there. But I digress ... this was also the one time we came the closest to living together. Mike lived on the second floor, and I lived on the third floor. This was also our last year or college and certainly the most fun. When we graduated from college in May 2003, we decided to just see how things went from there.

Years Five - Seven

During this period, I was working for Merck in Rahway, NJ, while Mike was working for CSC in Maryland somewhere. I lived in northern NJ and Mike still lived in Baltimore, so we got to know the I-95 corridor very, very well.


Year Eight - Nine

We got tired of working and applied to grad school. I ended up at the University of Delaware to get a PhD in chemical engineering. Mike went to the University of Pennsylvania to get a masters in computer science. Some people are surprised by this, but Newark, DE and Philadelphia are not that far from one another and the drive between our houses is about 45 minutes, so we're not actually long distance anymore. Yay!

Year Ten

At this point, I am kind of fuzzy with when exactly everything is falling in place, but I believe we got engaged at some point here.

Year Eleven

Getting married! Woot!

Welcome (again)

It's true, I did ask Mike for a blog. Wedding websites are usually kind of boring, right? All the important details are there, but why not add something a little more interesting?

I'll admit something here ... I am an internet lurker. I read other people's status updates and blogs without commenting. I try to extract as much information about someone as they'll let me - go through all of their pictures, read all of their updates and posts, etc. As long as it is public domain, I take the time to look at it. However, I don't bother to publicly divulge too much information about myself. It's mostly because I am a little lazy, and I am not all that interesting so there isn't much to say anyways.

Why the wedding blog, then? Because about half of our guests don't know me, and the other half don't know Mike. And it is a little strange to celebrate an event that is so important to us with people who don't even know either Mike or me or both, yes? It's nobody's fault, but I would like all of you to get to know the two of us a little bit before the big day so that you can get as excited about our wedding as we are. I'll (try to remember to) post cute stories about us and some insights to our hobbies, interests, and disinterests.

Almost five months left to the big day! I can't wait to celebrate the start of our marriage with all of you!

Welcome

Irene asked me to add a blog, so I did!!