Since I lost my own dad suddenly at a very early age (5), I was touched when I read this and wanted to help out.

I am auctioning off a one hour portrait session in the St. Louis metro area including images on disk with print rights.*

Bidding starts at $50.   Use the auction area at the right to bid.

I’ve been really busy with wedding stuff and other things going on in my life and have just not had time to post.  I promise to catch everyone up sometime in the next week or so.

This past weekend we drove up to Chicago.  Matt’s sister Jennifer and her husband Mark flew down from Minneapolis and met us there.

The drive up was fine, but boring. It was windy and cold, snowing by the time we got to Midway.

I had gotten a great deal on rooms at the Four Points Sheraton, one block off Michigan Avenue downtown.  The hotel staff there was some of the nicest I have ever encountered, and I’ve stayed at a lot of hotels.

Once we got settled in the hotel it was dinner time.  Jen and I had read about “priority seating” passes you could get from the hotel front desk for Gino’s East, where we planned on eating.  We stopped at the front desk and they gave us one.  We walked the 3 blocks to Gino’s in the snow and icy wind to find a line of about 20 people standing outside.  We gave the person at the door our priority pass and were seated within 10 minutes!

We enjoyed our first taste of real chicago deep dish pizza.

After eating we went back to the hotel and watched a movie on Matt’s laptop.  (note to self, bring av cable next time so we can hook laptop up to tv and not watch movie that small and soft)

That was the extent of day 1 in Chicago, it was too cold and nasty to go out and do anything else.

To be continued….

It was a lot of fun and all of the food was great.

For the Pork Wellington, you saute mushrooms and onions, stuff them inside a pork loin then roll that in prosciutto

.

Then that whole thing is wrapped in puff pastry dough.

Meanwhile, the potatoes are boiling and once those are done we SMASH them (sorry this was too intense for pictures)

Once we get the dinner items in the oven we start the batter for the chocolate lava cakes

You have to separate eggs

Melt chocolate into butter

Mix in some sugar and flour

Put it in the greased cups

Have a little pink wine out of a tumbler

Snack on some sausage and cheese

FINALLY the food is ready to come out of the oven. But the wellington has to rest for 10 minutes!

But finally, its dinner time

NOM! NOM! NOM!

Throw the lava cakes in the oven while eating.

If the lava cakes won’t come out of their ramekins intact, that’s okay, spoons work!

Matthew, do you like chocolate?

Play an enthusiastic game of Farkle to work off some calories

And round off the evening with a bit of snow

I will post the Pork Wellington recipe I used soon.

Printable Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground turkey breast
• 6 slices center cut bacon
• 1/2 medium onion, chopped
• 4 slices low fat provolone or cheddar cheese
• 1/4 cup egg substitute
• 1/8 cup breadcrumbs
• salt & pepper to taste
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 cup water
• 4 healthy life buns, toasted

Directions

1. Fry bacon
2. Move bacon to paper towel to drain
3. Remove all but 1tsp of bacon grease from pan
4. Saute onions in bacon grease
5. Chop the drained bacon
6. In a large bowl place the turkey, bacon and onions
7. Add egg and bread crumbs
8. Add salt and pepper (and any other spices you like)
9. Mix well
10. On a sheet of wax paper portion out the mixture into 8 equal portions
11. Flatten out 4 of the 8 portions
12. Break each slice of cheese into 4 pieces & place in the center of each of the 4 patties
13. flatten out the remaining 4 pieces of mixture and place one on top of each of the cheese topped patties
14. Squish it up around the edges so the cheese is totally enclosed
15. Heat the same pan you used to fry the bacon and onions  (medium-high-ish)
16. Place the patties in the pan
17. Cook about 7-8 minutes, then flip and cook another 7-8 minutes
18. Mix the Worcestershire & water and pour into the pan.
19. IMMEDIATELY cover with a lid
20. Cook an additional 4 minutes on medium heat (you can be toasting your buns at this time)
21. Check the temp of the burgers, needs to be at least 165!
22. Move from the pan to the toasted buns

Nutrition (approximate based on MY ingredients, yours may vary!)