Monday, May 20, 2013

TheKitchn & White Appliances

During TheKitchn's reader request week, they answered my request about awesome looking white ranges!


TheKitchn is one of my favorite blogs so I was super excited that they answered my request.  I think this one above is my fave of the bunch.  Although, one of the commenters suggested the White Ice line from Whirlpool which is looking pretty snazzy.

I am committed to keeping my freebie white range for the rest of the year, though I'd love a newer prettier one with more bells and whistles.

Thanks TheKitchn!!


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Posted by Connie at 12:26 PM 0 comments

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Puff Pastry: Best Thing Ever

Happy Mother's Day!  My gift to you is a rant about puff pastry and why it's so awesome.  AND!  A recipe.


Puff pastry is a freezer rock star.  You can buy it months in advance, pull it out and have it be ready for toppings in 10 minutes.  Plus, you can turn it into a dinner or dessert that everyone loves, because it's difficult not to love something so full of butter.

I am a huge fan of the puff pastry from Trader Joe's, specifically, for two reasons.

  1. It only contains flour, butter, salt, water and sugar.  NO HYDROGENATED OILS!    
  2. It's pre-flattened.  I've bought stuff at other stores that's folded in half, and you have to thaw it and roll it or worry about breaking it if you don't let it thaw enough.  
OK, so now we have "freezer friendly" "makes dinner fast" "not full of weird stuff" and "easy to work with".  Are there any downsides?  Well, yeah, it's full of butter, so it's not exactly the heart healthiest of foods.  Still, I think the benefits outweigh the risks for an occasional treat or fast dinner. 

Asparagus Romesco Tart

A few weeks ago, I happened to have some puff pastry and some homemade romesco in the freezer.  I had some time, but not a lot of energy, so I thawed out both puff pastry sheets on the counter and made the asparagus romesco tart (above) and a tasty strawberry cardamum tart for dessert. 

My family was super happy with the results, and I got to feel like I made something complicated and exciting for dinner, when really all I did was smear some stuff on some other stuff and bake. 

So basically I got a bunch of the self satisfied happiness of cooking without a ton of effort.  Love that!


Yummy Tart

Strawberry Cardamum Tart

  • 1 sheet of puff pastry dough, thawed for about 10 minutes
  • 1/4 cup strawberry preserves or jam 
  • 1/4 teaspoon crushed cardamum
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 1 cup sliced strawberries

  1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
  2. Place the puff pastry on a baking sheet covered with a silpat or parchment. 
  3. Microwave the strawberry preserves for about 30 seconds, until they are spreadable. 
  4. Slice the strawberries and toss in a bowl with the sugar and crushed cardamum.
  5. Spread the preserves over most of the tart, leaving an edge like you would for a pizza. Don't push hard and don't bruise up your pastry. Don't spread it on very thickly.
  6. Arrange the strawberries over the top of the preserves.  Drizzle on the sugar, cardamum, strawberry juice stuff from the bottom of the bowl.  Try your best not to eat the last 3 strawberries and lick your fingers.  fail.  OMG it's so tasty. 
  7. Bake for 15 - 20 minutes until the pastry is puffy.
  8. Take it out of the oven and let it cool while you eat dinner (maybe 20 minutes?).  The resting time will let the preserves solidify up a bit. 
  9. I slid mine off the silpat with a pizza peel and used a pizza wheel to slice it into 4 to serve. 
Note: I bought cardamum seeds out of the pods and I just crush them up with the flat of my chef's knife, and maybe run the blade through them a few times.  If you buy the seedpods, crush them to get the seeds out, then crush again and run your blade through them.  I do not buy the preground stuff because I think it tastes like dust, and the seeds, when crushed, taste like delightful heavenly wonderfulness. 

I could *easily* have eaten half of this.  It was delicious.  Cardamum and strawberries are amazing together, and this was super easy.  

Yum! 
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Posted by Connie at 9:43 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Taking the Easy Way (Grapefruit Walnut Salad)

I love magazines and cookbooks.  When I am starting to feel stressed and freaked out, I almost compulsively buy magazines at the grocery store.  They represent leisure for me, in a big, big way.

April is one of the busiest months of the year where I work, so of course, I bought 2 cooking magazines that I barely had time to read and didn't get around to cooking anything out of them until, well, May.  (Hi May!  Nice to see you!)



I bought a copy of Cooking Light this month. Their version of this recipe looks much prettier than mine, and was probably tastier, because I totally cheated.  I am not complaining, it was pretty tasty.  

Here is my cheater version.  It only really serves 2.

Grapefruit Walnut Salad

  • 1/2 ruby red grapefruit
  • 2 cups of roughly chopped butter lettuce 
  • 2 tablespoons walnuts 
  • 1/4 cup feta cheese
  • A drizzle of olive oil
  • Salt & Pepper to taste
Slice the peel and pith from the grapefruit.  I sliced a few sections out of it and pulled the membrane off by hand.  It was not super pretty, but it was tasty enough for me. 

Arrange the chopped lettuce on a platter and place the grapefruit sections around the plate. 

Sprinkle on the walnuts and crumble the feta cheese over the top.

I did not bother to make dressing.  I squeezed some of the remaining grapefruit over top, drizzled on some olive oil, and then salt & pepper to taste.  



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Posted by Connie at 10:00 PM 0 comments

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Indian Style Chopped Salad


Last Thanksgiving, we went to my mother in law's new house in Myrtle Beach.  My mother in law was happy to let me cook dinner, so while the family went out to watch my husband run the turkey trot 10k, I stayed home and cooked. Since it was just 6 of us, and we don't eat turkey, I opted for a nontraditional menu with lots of indian flavors, since we LOVE indian food.





Chopped salads are not difficult to make, but they do take a good bit of chopping. This recipe also involves roasting the chick peas and making the dressing, so it can be a bit time consuming, but totally worth the effort. The key is to make sure everything is chopped up nice and small.

Indian Style Chopped Salad

Dressing: 

  • 1/2 cup plain yogurt
  • 1 bunch fresh cilantro, divided
  • 1/4 cup fresh mint
  • juice of 1 lime
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 1 teaspoon cumin
  • salt & pepper, to taste
Whizz all ingredients in a blender or food processor until they are dressing consistency.   

Roasted Chick Peas: 

  • 1 14 ounce can chick peas
  • 1 tablespoon curry powder
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. 

Drain and rinse chick peas.  I like to slip the skins off the chick peas in my colander, but it's not strictly necessary.
Mix the chick peas, oil, and curry powder in a bowl and toss to combine.
Roast chick peas until they dark and starting to get dry.  Somewhere between 15 and 25 minutes.

Salad

  • 1 yellow or orange bell pepper
  • 1 cup green beans, steamed in the microwave
  • 4 cups spinach
  • 1/4 cup fresh cilantro 
  • 1/2 cup slivered almonds
  • 1 pint grape tomatoes
  • Roasted chick peas




Chop bell pepper and green beans into 1 centimeter cubes.
Chop spinach and cilantro into bite size pieces, or maybe a bit smaller.
Combine all the salad ingredients including the roasted chick peas and serve alongside the dressing.




Enjoy!
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Posted by Connie at 9:16 PM 0 comments

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Let's Get Awesome: Tear Off Sheets

I am doing my best to put some thought, right now, into my new years resolution and how I might motivate myself.

Let's Get Awesome!


I am not trying to lose a specific amount of weight and I am not training for a particular race.  I just want to exercise more.  I have been reading about Blue Zones and it strikes me that the one place I fall down is not walking everywhere.  I am not in a position to relocate my life all to one walkable work/life location right now, so I want to at least get up reasonably and walk or run or bike or do some yoga or whatever.

Enter my new idea: Tear Off Get Awesome Sheets.

Me and my son crossing the finish line at a 5k
I really can exercise!  Seriously!
The thing is, I have a hard time making the choice to go run for a half hour when I could be sitting around or baking cookies or doing something else.  In an effort to motivate myself, I have entered into a pact with one of my friends.

The Get Awesome Gift Pact

  1. Find a friend and set a budget
  2. Buy each other a specific amount of presents (we are doing 6) during the post-Christmas holiday sales
  3. Wrap the gifts super tight so that your friend cannot tell what you got her and exchange gifts
  4. Print out your tear off sheets linked to this post, or make your own!
    1. Pages has a template for flyers.  I assume MS Word does as well.  
  5. Cut the bottom little flaps so that you have 10 easy-to-tear-off strips of paper and post it somewhere you will see it.  
    1. I'm putting this on my fridge or maybe my calendar. 
  6. Every time you exercise or do whatever life affirming activity you are doing, tear off a strip.  When you get to 5, open a present!  
For my sheets, when you get to five, you get a present. am doing 3 sets of sheets, with 10 items on each sheet.  This is ENTIRELY because I use Pages (the Mac document creator) and there's a template that has 10 tear off strips on the bottom, and I like getting a perk halfway through.  We are going to do 6 gifts each so that we can print 3 sheets.

My friend is not sure if she wants to exercise or do something else, so I am including two templates.  One for my exercising.  Each unit is either 30 minutes running, 45 minutes biking, or an hour of yoga.
The other is for life affirming activities.  For some people, that might be "getting out to coffee without my kids" or "going on a date with my husband" or "taking my car to the car wash because I love it" or "spending an hour crocheting that blanket I've been working on".  Whatever works for you.  

Get Fit




I think this is fab for a few reasons:
  • There's no time limit or constraints.  
    • If you wanted to run on Thursday but Thursday ended up sucking, take a break.  Run whenever you have some time that weekend.  Your reward is waiting for you.
  • After Christmas sales are awesome and full of cute little things to gift each other.
  • You are helping a friend.     
  • It's motivating and fun and mysterious.  
    • What is in that little cylindrical one, anyway?  Man, I have to know!  I'm going to run four days this week.  
If gifts are not your thing or you and your friend are strapped for cash, you can give your friend cards with permission to do things for herself. I know it sounds silly, but being able to say "hey, Connie told me I got to have a 20 minute bubble bath today" to your partner or kids totally works.   I authorize you one trip to the library and get a new book.  Permission to paint your toenails hot pink with black polka dots.  Whatever you think she'd like.  


So that's my crazy idea.  Thanks to Pages for having an easy to edit flyer template and thanks to Vintage Printables for having free clip art I used for the flyers linked here.
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Posted by Connie at 2:09 PM 0 comments

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Peppermint Pretzel Bark

You guys, I made some awesome candy bark thing!!!

I was reading a magazine of Christmas Cookies, on account of how I am addicted to buying magazines and then mucking up the recipes.  But anyway, my mom is allergic to nuts, so I was looking for recipes without nuts and there was a Thin Mint Bark recipe, but that wasn't quite what I wanted, so I doctored it up to be Peppermint Pretzel Bark!  It was super easy, too.




Here's (most) of the cast of characters:

MISSING: Some milk chocolate chips, see below
Ingredients:
  • 1 bag of Hershey's mint chocolate chips
  • 1 bag of Sharfen Berger semisweet chocolate chips
  • about 2 cups of pretzels (I like the ones that are little squares kinda)
  • about a cup of peppermint candies - pulsed in the food processor.  
    • If you don't have a food processor, you can also put them in a zip top bag and crush them with a rolling pin
  • half a bag of milk chocolate chips 
You can also add a bit of shortening to the chocolate if you like, when you're melting it.  It makes it shinier, but I kinda didn't care so much about that.  I did use some butter to coat the bottom of my jelly roll pan.

Instructions:
Line a jelly roll pan with foil and rub it down with butter or spray it with nonstick spray, then cover with a layer of pretzels.

In 3 separate bowls, microwave each of the bags of chocolate chips for about 2 and a half minutes on high, stopping to stir every 45 seconds or so.  At some point, you'll still see a bunch of the shape of the chips but they'll melt when you stir.  When you get to that point, you have another 15 or so seconds to go and then you're done.

btw - if you can't find mint chocolate chips, you can stir in about a teaspoon of mint extract to 1 of the bowls of chocolate, but do this after it's done microwaving.  Don't overdo it.  

Start by glopping the dark chocolate onto the pretzels, kinda randomly.
see, kinda randomly?


Then do the mint chocolate.  Same thing, but try to get a good coating.
see?  at this point, I realized I needed more chocolate, so I bust out the milk chocolate.
So then do the last chocolate.
This looks pretty well coated.


At this point, you are going to take a thin spatula and start to smooth it all out, so you are completely covering the pretzels.  It's OK if you don't get it all the way to the edges.  It will taste fine just the same. 


When you get it all spread out, sprinkle the candies on top. 
The mints give you some idea what it's going to taste like.  Delicious, that's what.  

Cute!  Now chuck it in your fridge for about a half hour. After that, start breaking off little bits of it and eating it.  Mostly I did this because my son was bugging me like crazy to try it so I caved.  So take off some chunks to get your family to leave you alone and leave the rest in overnight.

Then take a big knife and start chunking it up.

At this point, if you have a blog, you set up kind of ludicrous pictures to make a cute thumbnail so you can pin it on pinterest.




OK I totally had to have my 5 year old hold up the corners of this towel because I don't have a good background.  I should figure that out over the Christmas break.  

Enjoy!



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Posted by Connie at 4:02 PM 0 comments

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Geek Christmas

I love it when a plan comes together.



We are having a relatively geeky Christmas this year.  To start with, I made these:



Yes, we are apparently Spiderman, The Incredible Hulk and Ironman this year for Christmas.  I'm obviously the Hulk.  Thomas wanted to be Spidey, and Jeff said he'd be Ironman.

I saw the felt cutouts of superheroes on Pinterest.  To be honest, I have no idea how I got to them, but that's basically the joy of Pinterest, you know?   
 

I have them hung up by the chimney with care.  You know, right next to the infant stages of our Lego Christmas Village.  (Thanks Jeff!!)


I especially like the juxtaposition of Santa and the punk concert.  


We have them on both sides of the fireplace.  Someday, when I can figure out how to take adequate pics of my fireplace, I will show you.  Here's the other side.

Jeff decorated up some Harry Potter with blinking lights.
 I really don't have much content in this post, other than the geeky Christmas bits and to tell you that I am OBSESSING over getting a teeny miniature girldog schnauzer.  A lot.  So much so that I actually was looking at webkins schnauzers to see if they were adequately cute.  (They are not.)  I found one on petfinder that I have been referring to as the upcoming cause of my impending divorce, on account of how if I brought home a 3rd dog, Jeff would leave me.  I have a husband, a son, and 2 boy dogs.  I just want something to dress up in little dresses, you know?  Testosterone, yeesch.

So, to stop obsessing, I decided to dress up the dogs I have.  That's them in little matching hoodies.


To be honest, Dogma's is *way* too small.  (He's the red hooded dog, and he's a big guy.)  Karma's fits great, but Karma is also all skin and bones.  I am worried about him.  Every since we came back from Thanksgiving, you can see each of his ribs and vertebrae.  When I went out to buy the hoodies, I got them some kind of granola bone chews and that fake dog bacon.  He also got Thomas's grilled cheese ends.  Hopefully, he'll put on some weight, but he is 12 years old, which is kinda old for labs.  This is all kinda sad, and I'm not really getting a little mini schnauzer in a pink dress.  




I will just try to be happy with our superhero Christmas stockings.
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Posted by Connie at 10:03 PM 0 comments
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