Sake hammered

Okay, so I didn’t get hammered on sake last night. But while eating at what is probably my new favorite restaurant in Madison, Umami, Dan and I decided that sake hammered would be a good name for a band. Or, at the very least, a post (considerably better, said Dan, than my original name for it, U-yum-i).

If you haven’t been to Umami yet, I think you should go. The dumplings with smoked tofu and boky choy are delightful and cooked to perfection and last night we splurged and also had the special- vegetarian buns, a spin on their popular pork buns. The spongy ‘mantou’ (steamed) buns were filled with hoisin sauce, pickled cucumbers and crisp tofu (“the best ever” said Dan-the-meat-eater). I hope these find their way on to the permanent menu. This was all before the main entree, a bowl of veggie ramen that is the epitome of comfort food. I don’t know how they make the earthy mushroom/ seawood broth, but I could eat it morning, noon and night (with a spicy bomb on the side). Interestingly enough, the locally-made (3 blocks away) ramen comes from RP’s pasta where I once worked as a waitress when there was still a restaurant associated with the pasta factory. It’s also home to one of my favorite moments in waitressing history when one of the cooks, fed up with habitually being yelled at by another cook, washed his hands at the sink, declared “No more work,” and walked out the door as I stood by, cheering him on for fulfilling one of my waitressing fantasies. It was brillant. While the restaurant end at RP’s had its issues, they produce wonderful pastas and the fresh ramen noodles employed by Umami are delectable (to think that I once thought ramen came in a brown and orange package with a packet of msg powder… I’m glad my definition has changed).

In addition to the consistenly-delicious food at Umami, I love the ambiance.

Sit in the bar area and pretend you are on vacation. Somewhere where the word ‘recall’ still means, “Hey Dan, do you recall the time B.J. Raji intercepted that ball during the playoff game against the Bears, ran it back for a touchdown and then shook his buns in the endzone?”

In other awesome news, tonight I disovered that one of my furry roomates, we’ll call him ‘Tuff Puff,’ loves kale. This came to my attention during dinner when he dug his claws into my leg as he swiped a piece of the nutrition-packed leafy green that had fallen on my lap and then devoured it (pepper flakes and all). Also, yesterday Dan came home with a bunch of new (to us) records, including Van Morrison, The Band and this one:

And finally, I made the peanut sauce from this, one of my new favorite blogs, tonight again for dinner and oh yum, is it tasty. I hope your week is off to as banner of a start… Cheers.

Umami Ramen & Dumpling Bar on Urbanspoon

A good day

I hope you had as good a day as my feline roomates who broke into their stash of catnip and most likely took naps in my basket of clean laundry. They are now asleep on my bed where they will soon launch a pounce attack on my feet while I sleep. Welcome to the new Wisconsin Fun Next Exit where I now simply talk about life with cats. But check back tomorrow… I might, just might, have a recipe for peanut sauce.

 

Tis the season

Happy one-year anniversary to Wisconsin Fun Next Exit.

It was a year ago this weekend that I was seeking spinach and scones and deciding to follow the advice of Orangette’s Molly Wizenberg and create my own little corner of the internet universe. I have been feeling nostalgic for the giddiness that I felt when I sat down with a bottle of wine to write that first post late on a Saturday night one year ago. I have truly enjoyed writing this and I’ve been thinking about how nice it is of you to join me here. So, thank you.

This past year has been a memorable one marked by an uprising,

a (temporary) job teaching third grade, a Packers super bowl victory, the Brewers in the playoffs, a train trip to Seattle,

road trips, old friends, new friends, an honest effort at really loving yoga (although my triangle pose is still a disaster), a new-found love of cats, specifically the two 10-year-olds who became my roomates in June,

moving to the east side, an attempt at growing a vegetable garden and cooking. Lots and lots of cooking.

Oh have I got some recipes for you. There’s an incredibly easy and delicious one for whole wheat pasta with a sauce made of butter, cream and blue cheese (go for a run first!) and tonight (while talking to my dear friend Jenn who lives in D.C. but aspires to move back to Madison) I made a vegetarian version of french onion soup with toasts and melted swiss cheese that tasted rich and hearty on this blustery day in Wisconsin. I plan on telling you all about these and more but for now it’s off to bed. Tomorrow I’ve got a date with Lambeau Field and Tuesday marks the first day of the campaign against Walker. I’ll provide the soup recipes and you provide the signatures. Tis the season for a recall. Let’s do this, Wisconsin.

Sweet dreams.

Thirsty Thursday: Campari cocktail

It’s August hot outside, I’ve been in professional development classes all week and I have a job interview tomorrow morning… All of this is making me very thirsty. I’m getting nostalgic for a drink that my mom made for me earlier this summer, and although I won’t be having one this evening, you should. Have another for me.

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Campari Collins

This recipe originally appeared in The New York Times 

2 ounces Campari

3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice

4 ounces chilled seltzer

3/4 ounce simple syrup

Pour the seltzer into a highball glass filled with ice and set aside. Pour the Campari, lemon juice and simple syrup into a cocktail shaker, fill with ice and shake vigorously. Strain into the glass with seltzer.

Yield: 1 drink.

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Cheers.

Hey, Clothesline

I feel like a bad correspondent and a broken record all rolled into one big ball of suntanned and bug-bitten guilt (‘I promise this time I’ll write!’). I still need to tell you about eating pizza at Delancey in Seattle, riding a police-confiscated, too-big-for-me bike in Jackson, paella in Cheyenne… the list goes on and on. But if I want to live in the present, be in the moment, focus on the here and now, then…

Greetings from the Scandinavian Riviera.

Poplar Lake, photo by Sena

As I type this, I am lucky enough to find myself with my family in the north woods of Minnesota. Even better, I find myself next to a deep, quiet lake and a sauna ten feet from its shores. The last two mornings I have started my day in the best possible way- with a 20-minute swim in the cool water (following a minute of apprehensive shivering in the shallows), a quick and furious dash to the sauna, 10 steamy-minutes of pouring ladles of lake water onto the rocks, a quick dash back to the lake, then a sigh-inducing and body-tingling five-minute swim. Yesterday this was followed by a breakfast of coffee and pancakes with lingonberries. Really, all mornings should start like this.

Afternoon splashing, photo by Sena

The last time I was able to start days this way was the last time that I was in northern Minnesota and my name wasn’t Erica, it was Clothilde. I was a camper at Lac du Bois. French camp. I spent five summers at this camp and all week I have been reminiscing about the magical time that I spent in the woods eating bon bons and listening to Salifou, a counselor from the Ivory Coast, tell us stories by the bonfire next to the beach. When I first started attending the camp, there were no showers. After getting awoken at a too-early hour (one summer I was in a cabin where my counselor would bang open the screen door and shout, ‘Bonjour Brussels!’- the name of our cabin- to rise us), we were marched down a path to an area where we bathed in the freezing cold lake, ran screaming up the slippery, steep wooden stairs to the sauna, and then back down to the lake. Breakfast in the lodge followed: Yogurt and mueslix, baguettes with butter and jam, and the best part- hot chocolate that we sipped out of bowls. Heaven.

A lot of what went on at the camp was conducted in French, and although I had studied it a little in school, I spent a lot of time at the camp not sure what was going on around me. It was wonderful. Every afternoon we gathered in a different spot for a new installment of what sounded like ‘plazeer da more,’ which was an on-going improv soap opera presented by the staff. I watched as my underwater basket-weaving instructor, wrapped in a bed sheet, moaned and cried to the tennis pro, Pascal. At the end of the ‘episode,’ I would clap and sing along to the theme song, as best I could, wondering all along what it was that I had just witnessed. Dinner followed. Fat jars of Dijon mustard with cork lids sat at each table and we would mix our own vinagrette every evening for our green salad, served family style. Campfires lit up the night and the singing of ‘Bon swa le loo’ (which, while I certainly can’t spell it, translates to ‘Good night, wolf’) meant bedtime.

While I fumbled and bumbled and spent a lot of time feeling somewhat confused, I learned the important things. I knew the sounds to make to withdraw enough francs out of my bank account to take to the store where I would say, ‘Shoov-oo-dray, ash-a-tay milk chocolate toblerone y coca-cola see-vou-play’ and walk away happily with my afternoon snack. One of my favorite counselors was a guy from France called Willie who would mimic my Wisconsin accent and had nicknamed me ‘Clothesline.’ One afternoon as I sat atop my blue and gray sleeping bag on the top bunk eating my toblerone, I looked out the screen door and saw Willie walking by my cabin. ‘Hey Willie,’ I yelled. ‘Hey, Clothesline,’ Willie responded. Fueled by an extreme sugar high, this exchange made my day and apparently, my long-term memory.

Back to the present. This excursion to the north woods has been marked by an abundance of seafood (including an out-of-this world meal at the Angry Trout in Grand Marais) and a lack of toblerones. The lake/ sauna/ lake routine seems better to me now then it ever did when I was known as Clothilde. Much like a youth may discover drugs, my mom has discovered headlamps. Last night as we lead her around in the woods she was euphoric as she declared that everything was sparkly and that there were bugs everywhere. Tonight we intend to have a campfire by the lake. I only wish that Salifou were here to tell us one of his stories.