Why I Oughta...

I've mentioned a bunch of our 'repeat' activities when we go up to Michigan and a lot of them have to do with food.  From Silver Beach Pizza to Uncommon Coffee Roasters in Saugatuck to Crane's Pie Pantry in Fennville  to Sherman's Dairy Bar in South Haven to Grampa's Cider Mill in Coloma , we identified over the years a number of places and experiences that we like and continue to go back to each time we visit southwest Michigan. But, I think we've found a new place that we're going to be adding to the rotation:  La Chula Mexican Market in Downtown Watervliet.  The first time we came across La Chula was last summer when we went to the Arclight Brewery in Downtown Watervliet .  Arclight is a BYOF (Bring your own food) place that focuses just on the beer.  They had a bbq guy going out in the parking lot and a few menus scattered on the tables.  One of the menus was for La Chula and was your typical tacos, burritos, chips + guac stuff.  Be...

Tears and tantrums were in full effect as we walked by, stopped and then moved on from this Princess fairytale castle at Costco.  Both of the girls were doing their best to make me bring this monstrosity come home with us.  It is meant to be used outside, but in our old house, we had a plastic version of a building like this in our basement, so I suppose you could easily bring this inside and use it your basement. At $429.99, it seems pricey to me, but your kids will love the styling and details.  It has a bunch (9!) of turrets and even a musical door knocker.  At 78" long and 95.5" tall, you need a pretty good size spot to keep this thing in or else you'll be squeezing past it whenever you go by it in your basement.   It comes in a pretty bib cube of a cardboard box that doesn't appear to be able to fit into most cars but would probably fit into most SUV trunks with the 3rd row down or our minivan with the 3rd row down.   Alas...this didn't work f...

As I've done in years past, I try to check out the annual cedar playset that Costco is rolling out in the Spring.  In fact, they're always some of the most popular posts here on the blog for folks coming via search.   Here's a post from 2012 showing that year's version with some plastic parts.  Then...right after that, they came out with a different version in 2012  that had less plastic parts.  And here's the one in Costco back in 2011 that we ended up buying .  I spent a bunch of weekends (along with my father-in-law) putting it together - which was a lot of fun. Since we sold the house, we left that playset behind.  It was a one-of-a-kind due to the location we placed it, we had to make a pretty major modification in terms of orienting the swings . This year's version has a nice little upgrade:  two slides.  One being a tube slide that winds around and the other being a open slide that has a few undulations in it.  Otherwise, i...

Earlier this week, I posted the photos of my new cutter pans for Chicago thin crust pizza making and here as you likely guessed, it didn't take long for me to try to put it them through their paces.  I grabbed a Aurelio's clone dough formulation from the PizzaMaking.com forums and dressed it with my usual set of ingredients: Chellino Scamorza cheese , pepperoni, hot Italian sausage and some red peppers.  Finished with some parm and basil after it baked. Consider this step one in a long journey towards my next pizza quest:  tavern cut, Chicago thin crust. We're living at Equation Boy/Man's house and thus, using their ovens.  I haven't quite gotten enough practice to know how they'd perform.  I put the pan on a lower rack and placed my baking steel on a rack just on top of the pie.  Thinking...that there would be some thermal mass baking the top.  That, indeed, worked great.  The top of the pie came out perfectly well done.  But the bott...

In sorting out some of the girls Disney pins from our last trip recently, I came across this Christmas-time one from last year.  I wore this one through most of the holiday season, but now it'll go into one of the girl's pin books/boards and will serve as a reminder of the holiday trip we took.  We didn't stay at the Polynesian on the trip where we picked this pin up, but we stopped there to have a few drinks at Trader Sam's and the bar upstairs with the pineapple drink while the kids were at the playhouse setup there at the Poly. I can't ever remember the difference between Chip and Dale.    But a quick Google search turns up this: Chip has a small black nose that looks similar to a chocolate chip while Dale has a larger red nose. Chip has two close together front teeth while Dale has two spread apart teeth. Finally the last visual difference is their fur. So that's Chip on the right and Dale on the left.  And it isn't just the nose color. The teeth...

The upcoming showing in the Art @ York series is going to be Trumbo featuring Bryan Cranson, Helen Mirren, Elle Fanning and Diane Lane.  With the Academy Awards coming up shortly, this could be a huge coup for the York.  If Cranston wins, I'm guessing this will be a packed showing? And if you do go, make sure you get there 30 minutes early for the organ music! I don't think I posted about February's Art @ York feature, but here's a link to the one from January of this year .    And here's a rundown of the rest of the Art @ York series .

Well, well, well.  Look at what showed up over the weekend at our house.  That's three brand new, pre-seasoned, permanent-coated 14" cutter pans for Chicago-style thin crust pizzas.  If you are looking for your own set, you can find them here .  I will caution you that they actually manufacture your pans and don't have them in stock.  Really.   Like it took a month to get them.  I first heard about Lloyd Pans and their cutter pans on the PizzaMaking.com forums .   Same place that I sourced my Detroit-style blue steel pans that I've put through their paces over the past four-ish years. This is part of the email I had with the Lloyd Pans customer representative - who couldn't have been nicer. We are the manufacturer of the pans you see on our website. We build them here in Spokane, WA so these will be "hot off the press" for you! :)   We are booked heavily in production right now, but are running extra shifts to get the work out s...