dining out: ted's bulletin

When Ofelia and Nathan were in town for the inauguration, we ate dinner at one of my favorite places on Barracks Row, Ted's Bulletin. The restaurant is a modern take on a retro diner/soda fountain. The decor and furnishings are all beautiful and well-made. Gone With the Wind was playing on a large TV screen on the back wall.

It was build-your-own-burger Tuesday, and the deal includes an alcoholic "adult" milkshake. Here's Tony's Bananas Foster shake, which he says is the best one on the menu. The waitress said it's the restaurant's most popular shake.

The build-your-own burger schtick has the potential to go awry when you have an adventurous eater like Tony. This is the monstrosity that he created:

That's a chicken breast topped with fried green tomatoes, coleslaw, bacon and Boursin cheese. He raved about it, though.

Yours truly got the veggie burger (obvi) with spinach and mushrooms. I love Ted's veggie burger, although it falls apart, so I ate about half of it with a fork.

And we couldn't leave Ted's without homemade Pop-Tarts. I got a strawberry, and Ofelia ordered the peanut butter and bacon.

Hello, Wednesday morning breakfast.

recipe: triple-chocolate cookies

The other week, Tony and I stopped in the library to pick up about a dozen books on DIY patio-building that I had requested. (I still am convinced that it's a project we can tackle.) And then I started wandering the aisles, greedily grabbing even more random books and adding them to my pile. Free books! I'd forgotten how fun it is to go to the library and just take whatever you want.

One of the cookbooks I checked out is the Cook's Illustrated cookbook, which, as far as I can tell, has a recipe for every single thing you would ever want to eat. Our Phoenix friends Ofelia and Nathan were coming into town to stay with us for the inauguration, and I thought it'd be nice to have cookies in the house, so Tony and I tried a recipe from the cookbook.

I know Tony's usually the one to speak in superlatives, but I'm going to acknowledge that I have never made a better chocolate cookie before. In fact, I can't even recall eating a better chocolate cookie that someone else has made. (Sorry, Mom.) They're that good.

Triple-Chocolate Cookies

Adapted from Cook's Illustrated

• 1 pound semisweet chocolate, broken into pieces
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons instant coffee
• 10 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 bag chocolate chips

Microwave chocolate at 50 percent power for 2 minutes. Stir. Heat for an additional minute on 50 percent power until melted. Set aside to cool slightly.

Whisk flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt in a bowl.

In separate bowl, whisk eggs and vanilla. Sprinkle instant coffee on top.

In stand mixer with the paddle, beat butter, brown sugar and sugar until just combined. On low speed, add egg mixture until just incorporated. Add chocolate until just combined. Add dry ingredients until just combined. Be careful not to overbeat the dough. With a spoon, stir in chocolate chips.

Cover dough with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes until dough is fudge-like.

For each cookie, roll 2 tablespoons of dough into a ball. Place cookies 1-1/2 inches apart on parchment-lined baking sheets.

Bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Edges should set, but centers will be soft. Let cookies cool on baking sheets for 10 minutes, and they will continue to firm up. Let cool completely on a wire rack.

Makes about 40 cookies.

home improvement: fix a sticky lock

Since we bought our house, the locks on our front security door have been really sticky. It took a lot of wiggling and jiggling to unlock the door. It'd always been kind of annoying, but things came to a head a couple of weeks ago when Tony and I came back from a run and the door wasn't opening. It was cold, we had no cell phones, and our neighbors weren't home. After about 15 minutes of wiggling and jiggling, the lock finally gave way.

But it prompted Tony to finally fix the lock. He Googled the phrase, "key sticks in lock fix." And guess what we found out? Fixing a sticky lock is very, very, very easy. Very easy.

Tony picked up a tube of powdered graphite for a few dollars at Frager's. He puffed a little bit into the keyhole and turned the key a few times.

Voila. Unsticky lock.

So now we know. Unstick a lock with powdered graphite.

And sincere apologies to all of our friends who have ever cat sat and had to fight the sticky door. Shouldn't have taken us this long to fix it.

things to do: alice's adventures in wonderland

If you're looking for something to do this weekend and you have a little scratch to splurge with (and you love the ballet!), let me advise that you get yourself to the Kennedy Center to see the National Ballet of Canada's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Valerie scored free tickets through a MyTix giveaway, and I was her date. Andrew and Tony, meanwhile, parked themselves at Froggy Bottom Pub for two and a half hours. The stereotypical gender division was agreeable to all parties.

I told Tony afterwards, though, that it's a shame he's sat through so many ballets over the years, and THIS is the one he missed. He would've really liked it. It was as if the set designers and costume designers had no limits to their imagination.

I was skeptical that the set folks would be able to make Alice shrink when she drank the potion and grow into a giant when she ate the cookie in a believable way, as this is a live stage show and all. But they did it! Thanks to video projections of doorways that got really, really big when Alice drank the potion. And the doors got really, really tiny when Alice ate the cookie.

And the caterpillar! That was my favorite costume. He paraded across the stage with his long body trailing him. His legs were those of eight ballerinas walking en pointe. The ballerinas' heads and bodies were hidden by the long body costume, so only their legs showed.

The duchess and the cook's bloody costumes and kitchen were disturbing and wonderful. The cook's sausage-making operation included the hindquarters of a pig sticking out of her meat grinder. *Shutters.* Disgusting.

The ballet is full of surprising, interesting moments like that. Highly recommend Alice before the show closes this weekend. (P.S. You can see a video with some of the costumes and sets here.)

<3

In other news, how neat was it to have a little bit of snow this morning? I hope my bulbs survive, though.

recipe: rosemary bread

I've been making a lot of bread this winter because (a) it makes the house smell amazing; (b) the oven keeps the house warm; and (c) homemade bread is far tastier than the store-bought kind. I've been making a lot of white bread, but a couple of weeks ago, I switched things up and made rosemary bread. Rosemary grows well all year round here, so I have a ton of it in my garden. This bread is amazing.

Rosemary Bread

Adapted from Martha Stewart

• 1 1/2 teaspoons yeast
• 1/4 cup warm water
• 3/4 cup water
• 5 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 3/4 cups flour
• 3 tablespoons chopped rosemary, divided

Heat oven to 200 degrees and turn off when it comes to temperature.

Combine yeast and 1/4 cup warm water in mixer bowl. Let stand about 7 minutes.

Add 3/4 cup water, olive oil, sugar, salt, flour, and 2 tablespoons rosemary.

Attach the dough hook, and mix on speed 2 until dough is smooth.

Place dough ball into an oiled bowl. Cover with a kitchen towel and place in warm oven for 1 hour.

Punch down dough and let rest for 15 minutes, covered.

Divide dough in half. Roll each half into a large rectangle with smallest side about 9 inches wide. With your hands, roll up the dough into a 9-inch-long loaf. Fold the ends over, so the end spirals aren't showing.

Grease two loaf pans, and place dough in them, seam-side down.

Press remaining 1 tablespoon rosemary into the loaves.

Cover and let rise 1 hour.

Dust loaves with a small amount of flour.

Bake 30 minutes at 400 degrees.

<3

By the way, I got this oven thermometer as a Christmas present from my parents. Holy guacamole, was this thing an eye opener. Turns out, "400" is more like 350, so I've had to make some adjustments when I'm preheating the oven.

decor: bedroom corner

A couple of months ago, I added some art to the corner in my bedroom above the brown trunk that I fixed up. Then last week, Tony looked over to my side of the room and asked when that painting went up. You can call him Eagle-Eye Tony, folks. But it made me realize I never blogged about how I finished this little corner.

I like the unevenness of the large framed painting on the left with the tiny cross on the right. But it's balanced down below by the bulky plant on the right and the small planter on the left.

Most of the furniture in the bedroom (dresser, wardrobe, two nightstands) are Hemnes pieces from Ikea in the black-brown finish, so the trunk and now the frame add some natural wood texture to break things up.

Here's a closeup of the cross, which I've had since I lived in Arizona.

I bought it in Nogales, which is a border town that we would visit sometimes. We'd park on the American side and walk across the border and do shopping. The cross is painted blue on the sides with tin on its face, and it has little saints under green glass orbs.

The planter is functional, too. I use it as a jewelry dish.

I keep pieces there that I wear a lot, so I don't have to put them away every night and get them back out in the morning.

The purple and green in the painting and the green in the cross, planter and plant go with the other purples and greens I have in the bedroom. So after living with a blank wall for a year, I'm happy to have it jazzed up a bit.