…moving quickly in a car past me and about a million other people. But it still counts.
This is a pic the Mister got as the Pope drove by us!
You may have noticed that I’ve been mostly AWOL from the the interwebs since Thursday. That’s because I’ve been busy flying to Philadelphia and fangirling over Pope Francis all weekend!!! I walked more than 20 miles over the span of 3 days: first site seeing in Philly and then gettin’ down with my Catholic self at the Festival of Families and the Papal Mass. SO MANY PEOPLE! SO MUCH EXCITEMENT! 😀
Needless to say, this made blogging a bit tricky. In fact, I pretty much failed at sharing my last Monty Python post on Facebook/Twitter. So I decided to make up for it by posting the shares today and linking to it here (better late than never, right?). If it’s any consolation, we’re finishing up our Monty Python menu today by adding a new custom tea to our Adagio collection: Monty Python’s Coconut Camelot Tea! Click on the link or the pic below to see a description of the tea and details on how to order.
Wow…with our Monty Python menu finished up, that means it’s almost October! HOW can it be almost October, guys? I could have sworn September just started yesterday. Then again, this month has been super busy for me, and not just with papal visit plans. I interviewed Jonathan Stroud about his new book tour a couple weeks ago, and I just finished my next Real Life at Home guest post. Plus, the Mister and I are moving on Halloween, and I’m doing NaNoWrMo this November. In short: CHAOS! It’s really no wonder October snuck up on me. Still, I’m SUPER excited for our new menu, especially since it involves one of my favorite authors! Want a hint as to what it could be? Check out the picture below!
Any guesses at what it could be? BONUS HINT: Instead of focusing on one book, this menu will focus on several books all by the same author (not necessarily a series).
Now then, I’m going to find a lovely little corner of my apartment in which to curl up and sleep off my 7 am flight from yesterday (if I wake up and see my shadow, we get 6 more weeks of fall).
Run away! Our Monty Python dessert is coming straight for you! Then again, maybe this isn’t such a bad thing, since these Flying Cow Milkshakes are absolutely delicious…and royally decadent! Made with homemade coconut ice cream, Oberweiss milk, and Oreos—they’re a sweet, refreshing reward after a long, hard day of being taunted by Frenchmen.
Last night, I interviewed Jonathan Stroud (famous for his bestselling Bartimaeus series) at a tour event for his new book, The Hollow Boy! And strangely enough, I owe it all to Goodreads. 🙂
I devoured the Bartimaeus books when they first came out, so I was thrilled when Goodreads notified me about Stroud’s new series: Lockwood & Co. It’s the story of three teens who run their own ghost-hunting agency in London, which is plagued by a sudden and mysterious ghost epidemic. An avid ghost story reader, I decided to read and review the first two Lockwood books (you can read my reviews here and here). Goodreads also informed me that Stroud was planning a promotional tour for the newest Lockwood book, The Hollow Boy. One of the tour events was scheduled to take place in La Grange, IL…not far from where I live! I tracked down the contact info for Stroud’s publicist and asked if I could pretty please have an interview with Mr. Stroud at the La Grange event. The publicist was gracious enough to forward the info to him, and he said YES! * cue shameless fangirl squeals *
This Shrubbery Salad was commissioned by The Knights Who Say Ni! They instructed us to make something that “looks nice and isn’t too expensive,” so we whipped up this delightful recipe from With Salt and Wit. The base is composed of thinly shaved Brussels sprouts, light and tasty enough to make you regret every bad thing you ever said about a Brussels sprout. And the cranberries, bacon bits, toasted walnuts, and homemade vinaigrette bring it all together to create a perfect balance of sweet and savory. Ni!
Watch out—this rabbit’s dynamite! For our Monty Python entree, we glazed chunks of red pepper, bacon, purple onion, and rabbit meat with Center Cut Cook’s spicy bang bang sauce to create kebabs with some kick. It’s our tribute to the Killer Rabbit!
Bring forth the Holy Hand Grenade! September is here, and we’re cooking up our 2nd Movie of the Month: Monty Python and the Holy Grail! I’m a HUGE Monty Python junky, so I’m super excited for this menu. What better way to start it off than with holy hand grenades? These little beauties are white cheddar mini cheese wheels studded with peppercorns and chive, topped with a cross to give them that authentic Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch look. You can throw them at your enemies if you like, but we recommend eating them.
Howdy and happy September, Wonderlanders! I’m currently editing up a very special menu for our SECOND Movie of the Month! Remember when we made Star Wars food for our first Movie of the Month, and it was awesome? Those Dry Rub BBQ Bantha Steaks are still my favorite steak recipe, hands down. ^.^
The new menu premieres on Thursday, so be sure to swing by and check it out! If you want to take a guess at what the Movie of the Month will be, here’s a hint:
Til then, try this cool food quotes quiz by Cait from Paper Fury where you match books to food quotes. I did ok (13 out of 19). The contemporary lit did me in, but I completely SMOKED the classic book quotes! ^.^ Question: Can I feel proud of myself for knowing the Game of Thrones quote…if the only reason I know it is because I have the GoT cookbook?
I have one last piece of news before I go finish my editing: we’ve made a new tea blend! In honor of our Odyssey menu, we’ve released Calypso’s Tea, our very first green tea. It has subtle hints of pineapple, peach, passion fruit, and oranges with an inclusion of hibiscus petals and coconut flakes. The tropical fruit makes it a great iced tea, but it’s also earthy enough to work as a hot tea too. You can order it through Adagio here or by clicking on the appropriate caption in our tea gallery.
NOTE: I’m a member of the Adagio Affiliate Program, which means I get a commission for every Adagio order placed as a direct result of a link from my site. If you see a tea you like but want to order it later, please come back to this site and click on one of our Adagio links to take you to their site. That way Adagio can track the order back to Alison’s Wonderland Recipes. Thanks for helping keep AWR up and running!
Cotton candy, candy floss, fairy floss: whatever you call it, it’s the perfect dessert for our Odyssey menu. I thought of it immediately when I read about Odysseus’ clever use of sheep to escape the cyclops, Polyphemus. But homemade cotton candy can be intimidating when you don’t have a machine, especially when every recipe you come across requires you to cut the end off your balloon whisk. I knew I didn’t want to go chopping up perfectly good utensils, so I did some experimenting…and I’m proud to announce that no whisks were harmed in the making of this recipe! I recommend buying a special kind of whisk called a ball whisk with silicone ends (available here). You get the same results as a trimmed balloon whisk, and you can use it like you would a regular whisk in most other situations.
Howdy, Wonderlanders! Many of you have probably heard of Yummly, the online recipe database where you can share, save, and ask questions about recipes. I heard lots of good things about it, so I went to check it out…and now I’m becoming one of their publishers! HUZZAH!
Thanks to Yummly, I’ll now have awesome recipe printables available for each new recipe I publish (I’ll be adding printables to my old posts gradually over the next couple months). I’ve also got a new Yummly sharing button with my other share buttons at the bottom of each post, so you can save my recipes to your Yummly recipe box straight from my blog. MORE HUZZAHS!
You can check out my personal Yummly profile here. My publisher profile will be up soon too, and I’ll add the link to that here when it’s available.
Not a Yummly user but want to become one? Don’t worry, you can fix that here.
The first thing I saw when I walked through the door. Shout out to all the other Supernatural fans out there! 😀
For years, my reason for not attending comic book conventions was simple: I don’t read comic books. No better reason than that, right? Well, a month ago the Mister (a big video game and comic book fan) asked me if I was interested in going to our local comic con, Wizard World Chicago. I thought, why not? With him working full time and attending grad school, it’s not often we get to spend a whole day together. Plus, my geeky horizons have widened considerably over the past couple years. I still love my books and tea, but now I’ve added things like Star Trek and Firefly to the mix. I still don’t have much interest in comic books, but I figured the convention might still be fun anyway. Turns out I TOTALLY wasn’t giving it enough credit.
Sherlock and Star Wars pillows by Craft Encounters
Tree mugs by Mesiree Ceramics (they had Totoro mugs too!)
This was a tea booth with steampunk flair!
When we got to the convention hall yesterday, it was PACKED. There were hundreds of people in the main lobby alone. Our first stop was the vendor hall, and I was floored by the huge variety of things there. We’re talking Hogwarts house bathrobes, hobbit hole watercolor paintings, leather Celtic journals, steampunk coffee presses, Star Trek oven mitts, and of course all things superhero. We stopped by a gaming room where the Mister played Super Smash Bros, and there were even Q&A panels with Youtube stars, comic book creators, and famous actors. We went to the Firefly panel and saw Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, and Summer Glau! * insert fangirl squeal here *
Like cars? They had three famous ones on display. This is the car from Knight Rider, but there was also a Mystery Machine and Iron Man’s 1965 Shelby Cobra.
And these are the spoils of my lovely trip to the vendor hall: a custom quote pillow, handmade stoneware Totoro mug, and two custom teas (Red Queen and Irish Whiskey Cream).
). You get the same results as a trimmed balloon whisk, and you can use it like you would a regular whisk in most other situations.
