Sunday Supper Series- Broiled Tilapia Parmesan and Green Beans

At least once a week – usually on Sunday nights- I’ll cook supper for Luke. It’s our time to relax, reflect on the previous week and eat a home-cooked meal. I am by no means a “chef” or “foodie” and the meals I make almost always come from a recipe. Regardless of my lack of professional training or high-brow taste, the food I make is usually delicious, easy to prepare and gets rave reviews from my man.

I’ve decided to start a weekly post called the “Sunday Supper Series” to share what I cooked for Luke that week and what we thought of it. Hopefully I can give you guys some ideas of recipes you can make for your friends, family or significant other that don’t involve difficult cooking techniques or a million ingredients.

For the first installment of the Sunday Supper Series, I made broiled tilapia parmesan with green beans. The tilapia recipe came from allrecipes.com and is insanely delicious while being super easy to make. It took me less than 15 minutes to whip together.

Broiling the parmesan mixture on the fish makes for a crispy, cheesy, tangy crust that compliments the fish perfectly. I’m not a huge fish person, but the cheese mixture hides any “fishy-ness” while complimenting the taste of the tilapia. Luke’s response? “This is REALLY good.”

I paired the fish with some steamed green beans that I sauteed in some butter, salt & pepper and a dash of cayenne pepper before serving. If you haven’t tried cayenne on your green beans, DO IT! It adds this slightly spicy after-taste that I adore.

Here are some pictures along with the full recipe. Enjoy!

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Broiled Tilapia Parmesan- (recipe via AllRecipes.com)

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
  • 1/4 cup butter, softened
  • 3 tablespoons mayonnaise
  • 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried basil
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
  • 1/8 teaspoon onion powder
  • 1/8 teaspoon celery salt
  • 2 pounds tilapia fillets

Directions

  1. Preheat your oven’s broiler. Grease a broiling pan or line pan with aluminum foil.
  2. In a small bowl, mix together the Parmesan cheese, butter, mayonnaise and lemon juice. Season with dried basil, pepper, onion powder and celery salt. Mix well and set aside.
  3. Arrange fillets in a single layer on the prepared pan. Broil a few inches from the heat for 2 to 3 minutes. Flip the fillets over and broil for a couple more minutes. Remove the fillets from the oven and cover them with the Parmesan cheese mixture on the top side. Broil for 2 more minutes or until the topping is browned and fish flakes easily with a fork. Be careful not to over cook the fish.

Networking With Batman

This week I was in LA for the 140 Twitter Conference, which brought together the best and brightest “power twitterers” including celebrities like @Tyrese4real, @chamillionaire, @drdrew, @adventuregirl, @GuyKawaski, @nerdist (Chris Hardwick) and yes, even @peeweeherman, to discuss the state and future of Twitter.

Beyond attending the sessions of the conference and checking out the booths for the latests geeked out twitter applications, I was determined to meet and engage with as many people as I could, including the influential Twitter stars I’ve mentioned above.

I’ve never found it difficult to meet new people and find common ground, but making a memorable impression that they’ll remember beyond our 30 second conversation can be hard.

Or at least it used to be before I was marrying Batman.

It’s been incredible. Once one person found out what my soon-to-be married name would be (by reading my blog via Twitter), word spread. The topic of my fiance’s name was an instant ice breaker and an opportunity to talk with people I might not have had the courage to approach otherwise, like these people:

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batmanbatman3I knew that marrying into the last name Batman would bring some interesting reactions from people I came in contact with, but who knew it would also serve as a networking tool?

I guess I am a pretty lucky girl- not only am I marrying a wonderful man, but he happens to have one awesome last name too!

Dndndndndndndndndndndndndndnd- BATMAN! lol

PS: You can see photos I snapped of the celebs I met at the confrence  on my Facebook page here http://bit.ly/E4oun (friend me if you can’t see them).

A Little Lunch Note…A Huge Deal

As some of you know, I work in consumer PR here in Chicago. I don’t plan on writing much about work on here, but I recently helped launch a campaign for my client Lunchables that I think is too cute not to share!

It’s called the “Lunch Note Promise” campaign and essentially what we’re doing is asking parents and caregivers to promise to drop a note of encouragement into their child’s lunch. For every parent that logs onto www.lunchnotepromise.com to make that promise, the Lunchables team will donate a meal to children and families in need through Feeding America, which serves an estimated nine million children each year.  The goal is to turn 100,000 promises into up to 100,000 meals.

This video explains it all perfectly…

 

Cute, huh?! I helped launch the campaign for my client last week in New York, which is why I haven’t been able to post much lately. We partnered with Olympic gymnast and Dancing with the Star’s winner, Shawn Johnson.

Shawn visited some kids at the 92nd St. Y in New York City to share her secrets to success…the encouragement she got from her parents and mentors. She also dropped off a $10,000 donation from Lunchables, so the Y could purchase some new gym equipment for the kids.

The kids got some 1 on 1 time with Shawn to practice their gymnastics and hula hooping. Check out some photos-

 

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(Photos by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images)

I think everyone had a great time with Shawn. She is a sweetheart and really great with the kids. Now that the event is over, we’re just working away to reach 100,000 promises.

Will you pretty please help my team donate a meal to a kid in need? It’s super easy! Just go to www.lunchnotepromise.com and click to make a promise.

Thanks in advance!

(Major props to the Weber Shandwick Lunchables team- Alan, Jody, Kate, Tiasha, Laura, Dan and Jenn for pulling off this launch and being a blast to work with!)

My Best Friend’s Wedding

As I mentioned in my previous post, this past weekend Luke and I were in Toledo, OH for my best friend Julia’s wedding. Julia and I met in high school, lived together in college and have kept in touch post-college. She’s been there with me through thick and thin, and knows me better than any other friend.

Julia’s wedding was absolutely beautiful. It was a perfect day- 75 without a cloud in the sky. All us bridesmaids met at Julia’s house around 11am and after some bagels (gotta load up on those carbs!) and mimosas, we helped Julia slip into her beautiful trumpet-style dress.

I had arranged ahead of time with the bridesmaids to get her small presents to complete the “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” saying, which I think she really liked. I was in charge of the “something blue” and got her a hanky embroidered in blue with her initial and the date.

After some pictures, we all headed over in a limo to Corpus Christie church in Toledo, which is a modern building with a lot of tall windows to let in all that sunlight. Her mom had arranged for a four person string quartet to play Pachelbel’s Canon as the bridesmaids walked down the aisle (I’ll never get sick of hearing that georgous song!).

Then Julia appeared with her dad and the trumpets began…

 

Julia’s wedding is to be continued as I was a real dum dum and forgot to get my camera battery out of its charger. Grrr.

Since I don’t have any pictures of my own to share, I’m going to wait until some good ones pop up on Facebook. You will want to see the pictures, trust me! Words alone wouldn’t do justice the beauty of her recpetion.

PS- congratulations Julia and Jake! Your wedding was amazing and you make a wonderful couple.