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The holiday parade went through downtown a couple of weeks ago.  We got some good pictures from the roof, but didn’t stay out long enough to take pictures of everything.  It went on a long time.

Kids dressed as presents

Rocky Rococo!

Despite a cold, cloudy, and windy day, the sun made a brief appearance. Hopefully this is a promise of a nicer day tomorrow!

To round out our “family fun days,” we drove down to Wisconsin Dells with Justin’s parents, John and Sarah, where we met up with his brother Luke and Luke’s girlfriend Cheyanne on Monday.  Justin’s parents booked a suite at The Wilderness Resort where there are two indoor water parks and a wave pool, connected by hallways and skywalks.  After meeting at Damon’s for dinner (so John and Justin could get their trivia fix) we drove back to the Lodge for the evening.  John, Justin, Luke and Cheyanne decided to check out the water parks while Sarah and I drove over to a nearby outlet mall to walk around.

Splash it up!

On Tuesday morning we were up and ready to go when the parks opened.  Justin and I spent the morning in the “Wild Water Dome” where the large wave pool was located.  The dome was also really nice, as the roof was all glass, letting plenty of sunlight in.  As John, Sarah, Luke and Cheyanne joined us, we all decided to explore the other water parks, which included quite a hike to the other end of the resort.  A few tube rides and the lazy river were enjoyed, including some additional time in the wave pool, and by early afternoon we were hungry and tired (and it started to get more and more crowded with Spring Breaking families).  We changed, had a relaxed lunch at Uno’s Chicago Grill, and then headed home.   While we had a great time playing and swimming and sharing the time with family, we all agreed that the Kalahari in the Dells was the better of the two resorts, as the water park is larger and all in one place, and a bit easier to get around.

Thanks, John and Sarah, for this fun get-away!

Today, in the “Les Halles” challenge, I made “soupe au pistou”, which is vegetable soup with pesto in it.  There was a lot of prep work that had to go into this, including slicing garlic, an onion, tomatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, a leek, and a fennel bulb.  The vegetables were all sweated down and simmered with a bunch of chicken stock.

Next, elbow noodles and beans were added and cooked.  Finally, at the end, pesto was mixed in to give it some extra “pizzazz”.  I cheated a bit on the pesto.  Julie had a bunch frozen that I used instead of making my own.  The end result was still really good.  Not quite as good as the onion soup, but, in my opinion, way better than the fungus soup from yesterday.  This recipe made a lot, so some went to the Kings.  I am interested to hear if it gets better or worse overnight.

I will be the first to admit that I am not a fan of mushrooms.  This is something I am trying to overcome, but I am thinking it will take more time.  Today I made mushroom soup.  This soup is made from butter, an onion, a heaping pile of mushrooms, and a little bit of sherry.

It was cooked down for an hour and then blended in the food processor until “smooth”.  I tried a bite and decided that my “soup” tonight was going to be Frosted Mini-Wheats.   Julie assured me that the soup was actually good, but I will just have to take her word on it, since I wasn’t going to try more than the bite I had.

Well, the first recipe I tried turned out to be a rather big success, so I think I am going to declare that I have conquered “cooking” and must now move on to something else.  Today I made Onion Soup out of the Les Halles cookbook.  It took awhile to get to the end result, but the time spent was well worth it.  The recipe starts with a bunch of onions, sliced thinly on the mandolin (I still have my finger tips), which are reduced down for about 25 minutes with a stick of butter.

Next, balsamic vinegar and port wine are added, along with some chicken stock, cubed bacon (I didn’t say it was healthy) and seasoning.

This is left to simmer for about an hour.  Next, it’s ladeled into crocks, topped with a crouton (Julie’s bread from yesterday), and a handful of Gruyere and put under the broiler.

The result was some of the best onion soup I have ever had.  It had a great flavor.  Next time I think we could use a bit more stock, as the balance of soup to onion wasn’t quite where I would like it, and I will probably hit the cheese with the propane torch to give it a little “extra”, but overall it was a rousing success for my first try.  This cooking thing isn’t too hard so far.

Julie tasked me with finding a cookbook to go through, to match her bread quest.  To be clear – I am not a cook, unless pouring milk on cereal counts as cooking.  This will definitely be much more of a challenge for myself.  Expect lots of whiny cries of “Juuullliieee” as I go through recipies when I get stuck or don’t know what to do.  The book I chose is “Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook“.  This is a collection of French Bistro recipes for all sorts of different ingredients, from potatoes to seafood to pork.  I chose this one because we have both read Anthony Bourdain’s other books and enjoy his writing style, and this cookbook follows in the same patterns.  I like being berated in all sorts of colorful language when I read a cookbook.  Plus, he turned us on to bone marrow, so I know the recipes will be good.  I know there will be some horrible things going wrong as I attempt this (hooray for Polito’s and El Mezcal), and I know for a fact that we are going to have to be creative in how we obtain certain ingredients, but at the same time I have always wanted to learn how to at least feed myself, so this will be a good start.  Normally when Julie is gone I mooch off friends, eat Portessi cheese fries, and go to my parents’ house for meals.