It's been a busy month, but after a wonderful trip to Chicago, we had the last weekend free to basically do nothing. And how glorious it was. With the extra time, we popped open a bottle of wine (a Moreccio Bolgheri 2014) and started cooking.

For Christmas Jenn received a new waffle maker. We received a waffle maker as a wedding present and although it made good waffles it was a hassle to clean. Jenn ended up getting a Cuisinart Waffle Maker that flips (ensuring even doneness) and we've been meaning to use it ever since. Sadly with the move, we never got around to using it and thought why not give it a whirl for our Easter breakfast. 

The last couple of months have been quite the busy months for Jenn and I. It's hard to imagine that in a mere week we will be moving back to Newport Beach after spending two years in a high-rise. Before our apartment becomes a jungle of boxes we decided to do one final Chef Joel & Jenn, Parmesan Shrimp Pasta. I actually tried to do this a week back but Whole Food was out of fresh shrimp and only had pre-cooked. Luckily this week they were back in stock and ready for our pasta. 

It feels good to finally be able to sit down and write again. The first three months of 2017 have been the least amount of blogging I've done in the last couple of years. There's been a ton of great things happening in our lives and one of which we went out to celebrate this past weekend, Jenn's new job.

It's been a month since our last Chef Joel & Jenn, but we're hoping this is the start of many in 2017. Our first recipe is actually two recipes within one post. We've made a lot of baked chicken but usually they've involved lengthy prep for sauces. We decided we wanted to make something that would be slightly easier to make during the week. We also made some mashed potatoes to go with the dinner because Whole Foods only had bags of potatoes instead of individual, so we had plenty of potatoes to use. 

One of the latest trends for Jenn and I is to try new restaurants when we go to the theater. To celebrate the holiday season we finally went to go try Vaca a restaurant right across from South Coast Repertory and one of the most raved about restaurants in Orange County. When we made the reservations (almost a month ago) we found out that the head chef of Vaca is someone we are watching right now on Top Chef Season 13. Kind of a crazy coincidence.