Today was my department’s holiday party at school. There was a huge spread–8 trays of fried chicken, 3 platters of ham, 3 of mac and cheese–and it included some homemade dishes too. I decided to make these stuffed portobello mushrooms (appetizer sized) and forgot to take a picture of them! So I’ve yanked the one from Giada De Laurentiis’ recipe on Foodnetwork.com:

Stuffed Mushrooms

These stuffed mushrooms are soooo good!! I’ve made them with large portobello caps once before, and they could honestly be an entree by themselves as opposed to the appetizer Giada suggests. For the holiday party, I found smaller “stuffer-sized” portobello caps, and they came out great.
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I planned a girls’ night out last weekend…sorta. I wanted to get together and do something, but couldn’t think of what. Luckily, one of us had tried and liked TWO Urban Licks, and the other 2 were interested in checking it out. There’s no pic of the facade because the outside of TWO is basically a warehouse. Inside, however, is a huge, busy space surrounding an impressive rotisserie. On our visit, we tried tons of tapas:

Lamb Flat Bread

Shaved Calamari

Oysters & Onion Straws

Friday night we visited Utopia [insert various food types here] Lounge for a friend’s birthday.  Although Utopia is located less than half a mile from my current residence and I’ve heard good things about its bar scene, I have never taken the opportunity to visit.  Utopia is currently touted as a Cajun and tapas lounge, but has previously been a tapas, sushi, and martini bar, among other things.  Despite all this, Utopia is, at it’s heart, a nightclub. The kitchen is open until 1am and there are three different rooms with separate DJ’s and ambiances. The Lounge’s confusion about its cuisine led to a little confusion over its menu offerings, but we soon settled on two items from the Cajun side of the menu, the Southern Fried Chicken and the Seafood Crepes, both with a side of Cajun fries.

Southern Fried Chicken

Seafood Crepes

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