Yesterday was the first day of Garde Manger! For those of you who have sent in questions Garde Manger is the art of the "cold kitchen". For example making things like salad dressings, meat and veggie trays, and sooooooo much more. We learned that when kitchens were actually ran brigade style Garde Manger was in charge of making use from the scraps from the rest of the kitchen. Like meat scraps from butchering and turning it into a pate. It was only later that it turned into the cold kitchen.
Well the first day we started off with dressings for salads. Needless to say there were a lot of emulsions to make! We took a trip down to the garden here at SLU and picked lovely herbs and greens to use in the recipes for that day. Dressings made were balsamic vinaigrette, grapefruit vinaigrette, some different variations of a beet vinaigrette, fat free Italian dressing, remoulade sauce, Mayo, and a green goddess dressing! Top it off with edible flowers to make one of the healthiest lunches not from a box I've had in a while. Which is so very sad. But delicious! 

This weekend the roomates and I tried to relax as much as possible before Monday.... The first day of school before the semester. To start the weekend off right Brittany and I headed off to the Delmar Loop. This is my favorite place in St. Louis. We started first at the Three Kings, an English pub restaurant. The atmosphere is friendly and inviting. The tunes are always good, and they have a wide range of beer on tap. Above the bar is a painting of King Kong, King Louis, and Elvis. The food there has always been good. I love the burgers, the rosemary chicken sandwich, and the fish and chips. It also serves ginger ale, which is more rare than you'd think. The real reason I love the Three Kings? The calamari! They have my absolute favorite fried calamari in the city! Needless to say this is what I ate for my Entree. Brittany enjoyed the flamethrower. 

Next we visited two of our favorite bookstores. First a small store called Subterranean Books. It's a beautiful little book store that has everything. If it doesn't they'll order it for you. Then it was a quick visit to Star Clipper. Very possibly my favorite store in St. Louis. It sells comic books and nerd gear galore. They always have something going on. They bring in local artists, have comic book signings, and will actually have a artist search for lion force comics  Saturday, January 26, 13-3pm. I've fallen in love with so many good reads here and the staff knows me by name. 

With all that excitement we finished off the night with board games Zombiecide and Mansions of Madness. Our friend Connor loves tabletop games so we always have plenty to choose from. He's going to France this semester and we sent him off after a great night. Every game night in this apartment includes endless pots of tea served out of dainty teacups. How else would you fight zombies? Today we celebrated Brittany's eldest brother Tim's birthday with nachos, cheesecake , and ice cream! Now that the weekend is over tomorrow starts the semester of accounting, statistics, baking and more!