I love a good hot dog. A Chicago Dog. Vienna Beef. Covered in mustard, relish, onions, tomato, pickle and celery salt in a poppy seed flecked bun. I got my fill this weekend at the Bunny Hutch located next to Chicago’s own Novelty Golf at the corners of Lincoln and Devon. Just look at that mess of greasy goodness we devoured.
We played course #1 at the Novelty Golf which included, a T-Rex, a mermaid, the statue of liberty which you can see from this street view on Google Maps.
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a ying-yang spinner, 2 chickens and a varitey of other odd fiberglass object littered holes. Don’t get me wrong here. This place is great. We love this place!!! But more in that old kitschy kind of way, than isn’t this new and amazing? It is mini-golf after all. The sounds is terrible, but as you can see by this Tivo-ed video they are still showing the same commercial they shot back in 1972 to attract business to their location. You don’t need to update a tradition.
You may of course have to wait until next year to visit. This past weekend in Chicago was unseasonably warm (it got up to 80) just in time for the marathon. But when spring rolls around again you should get out and try it on for size.
Filed under: Cooking
By putting in some overtime earlier in the week, I was able to leave my job early on Friday and venture home for the cooking of two tempting squash lasagnas. I am still a Martha Stewart die hard and tried out two of her recipes for varied squash lasagnas. Butternut Squash and Sage Lasagna was taken from this month’s Martha Stewart Living magazine, and the Acorn Squash Lasagna comes from her on-line explosion of recipes.
I’ll start with the Acorn Squash lasagna. First off this was a very easy, and minimal ingredient recipe. I’d never cooked acorn squash before so when I looked at the recipe for direction on making the puree I was pleasantly suprised to see that the only instructions were basically to plop the squash whole 
(no poking of holes or anything) on a baking pan and put it in a 400 degree oven for around an hour (with an occasional turn). After an hour of cooking (and a little time to cool) the skin cleanly fell away from the flesh as I peeled it back and scooped the squash into the food processor for puree-ing. So easy, and you could easily stop at the puree part and serve the squash as a side dish to any meal without continuing on. But if you do continue on you gain the plus to this recipe that is the use of no-bake lasagna noodles. Just plop them in dry with all the ingredients and they cook as the lasagna does. Granted your lasagna will have to spend some extra time in the oven (in order to make sure the noodles are done) but this is a timing element, not a work element, which is where you spend time while making the Butternut Squash Lasagna.
While the Butternut Squash Lasagna was similair in flavor to the acorn squash lasagna (both used sage and nutmeg) the addition of egg yolk, mozzarella, heavy cream really to the cheesy layers of this lasagna made it extra rich and dense. This lasagna also called for cooked noodles. 
With my love of cooking and extra time available I decided to make my own whole-wheat lasagna noodles to use in this dish. You can certainly use store-bought noodles that must be cooked ahead of time, and Martha has a more standard pasta recipe for use with the Lasagna, but I still have a soft spot for The Pasta Bible cookbook we picked up at the close out of the used book store in our neighborhood earlier this summer. (We miss you Kate the Great!)
Cooking the butternut squash is not hard once it’s peeled and cubed. But peeling it was no easy feat. In fact if you have any tips on how to peel a butternut squash I would be much obliged to listen to them. I ended up with peelings all over my floor before the process was complete. Once it was peeled and cubed it only took about 30 minutes in a 375 degree oven to be cooked and ready for assembly.
But I’ve felt inspired. I want to try other squash dishes. With the idea of perhaps becoming a vegetarian and being excited about squash, I’m thinking of perhaps proposing a trial 30 day veggie challenge. Pick some items we’ve never used before (we already have 2 Delicata Squash at home from the food share) and see what kind of tasty meals we can come up with. Do you have any recipes I should try with squash?? Let me know. I’d love to try them.
