Anti-France de Mayo
At the last second we decided to throw a Cinco De Mayo party this year. We grilled meat, peppers, and onions, and threw some cheese and guac on the table for tacos. Cinco De Mayo in America is primarily a good day to dance the Macarena and drink some Corona, but it celebrates the Mexican army’s surprise victory over French forces. It was clear we had our Mexican pride and down with the French forces!
*I am not anti-French at all, but we thought this would be a fun theme.
I printed out a bunch of small French flag graphics I found on the Internet and glued them around toothpicks to make Viva Mexico Margaritas. I have the feeling I’ll be making a lot of toothpick flags for every party from now on! They work well in cupcakes too.
Of course there was a pinata! We stuffed this with candy and plastic dinosaurs. The dinosaurs were a HUGE hit. Our party was mainly late 20-30 somethings and the guys still went gaga for the dinos. They were trying to trade with each other and talking about putting them up in their cubicles.
The next morning
While this party was thrown together in a day it was one of my favorites yet! Easy food prep, fun theme and dinosaurs flying like shrapnel from an exploding pinata! Happy 5th of May!
*Love ya France!
Lots o’ love
I know everyone says they have the best mother, but I can’t imagine any other mother for me. Thank you for everything ma!
(I took this photo when we were at the Stanford shopping center together last weekend!)
You stole my heart in 1-2-3
I can’t stop listening to Stole My Heart by Little and Ashley. It just makes me happy! Even better Amazon has it for a free MP3 download here.
I love you, don’t you see
you stole my heart in 1-2-3
I love you, yes it’s true
You stole my heart and
I’m gonna steal yours too
Adding pizazz to vodka
In honor of Cinco De Mayo I bring you alcohol! Okay it’s not tequilla, and actually Cinco De Mayo is a voluntary holiday in Mexico, but we are quibbling here! We have diy flavored booze!
My friend E is actually the creator of these infused vodkas, but when he came over to filter them I took the pretty bottles outside right away for a photo shoot. On the left is pepper infused vodka and on the right is tomato. Infused vodkas have been gaining some internet popularity after all the Skittles infused ones started popping up. Both of these are perfect for making bloody marys of course.
As I understand it, depending on the item being added to the vodka the infusion process time may vary. He had the pepper and tomato sitting around for about a week. Then with a coffee filter and a funnel the vodka was strained into the final bottles. The pepper vodka was super strength. The dark color is an indication of the eye watering to come.
Now E is working on cucumber vodka. Personally I’m still a fan of vodka soaked gummy bears, but that’s a story for another day.
I think that cookie cutters are starting to become a new obsession of mine. I found a cute ice cream cone at Joanns the other day and inspiration struck. Since I knew I would be making brown royal icing I also picked out my hedgehog and squirrel cookie cutters. I find that the same cutter gets boring when rolling cookies, so I like having a few other shapes.
This was the first time I waited overnight for one color to dry completely before adding more, but it was worth it to get such clean lines on top and that great layered feel.
While I love the cones on on the ice cream, surpsingly enough I think that the simple hedgehogs and squirrels are even cooler. Both cookie cutters came in a woodland animal Ikea set. I really want to make the moose cookies one of these days for my mother and her Northern Exposure love.
I bought a package of cellophane bags from Daiso and wrapped them up to give to my friends. It’s amazing how much a little bag and twisty tie dress them up 🙂
Presto Pesto!
In my continuing quest to try new things I invested in a HUMONGOID basil plant from Trader Joes (only $2.99!) I have never kept herb plants before, so when it started drooping I didn’t know what was wrong until my boyfriend knocked me on the head and said, “You need to prune those leaves you know.” Whoops! You can see I’m only halfway through my pruning in the picture and there were still a ton of huge leaves left.
Now the next question, what to do with copious amounts of basil? This time mom to the rescue! Make pesto!
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts (or almonds, or walnuts!)
3 gloves garlic
1 1/2 cups fresh basil
1/2 cup olive oil
1 pinch ground nutmeg
3 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste
Throw everything into a food processor or blender and go to town!
Now I combined a bunch of pesto recipes to come to this one and even this is highly customizable based on your taste. Some people complained about too much garlic, but I ended up adding another clove because I am afraid of Dracula. The ground nutmeg is a big plus in my book, but many recipes don’t contain it. Pine nuts taste the best (or most traditional), but I loved the cheaper toasted almonds.
The first day we had the pesto as is over some pasta, but the next day I heated milk and a tbsp of flour on the stove and added the pesto to make a cream sauce. I added leftover asparagus stalks and leftover salmon for an easy weeknight dinner.
Marble cookie fun time
Sweetopia did an amazing tutorial on doing marble cookies with royal icing here. I decided, hey I like being covered in icing, let’s do this!
I love the set of 5 fluted square cutters that come in the Ateco set
I was outlining several squares before flooding and this kept the cookies from having a totally uniform surface. Next time I’ll outline and then flood each cookie before moving on to the next. It is more time consuming, but the edges will be neater.
As you can see I became a bit schizophrenic, I mean creative over time. It was almost like tending a zen garden dragging my toothpick through the icing.
I tried doing letters. I need to work on a steadier hand, but I do want to make typographic cookies now.
Ah, let us never forget I’m a messy person. I have a hard time concentrating on things, but R says I get hyper focused when I work on icing cookies.
Also Marian from Sweetopia is as sweet as her site (Sorry I had to go with the pun). Visit her site and goggle in sugary awe.
Arwen in Breadland
For our housewarming my friends gifted us with a lovely 6 qt Lodge dutch oven in sexy fire engine red, and Jim Lahey’s My Bread. Now I am inherently lazy, so the idea of not having to knead bread, and yet achieve fancy pants artisan style crust was like lazy man’s nirvana! I bought my first packet of instant active yeast ever, threw in the right amount of water, flour and salt and watched the gluten strands form. Mwah food science! There are a ton of articles on the Internet about the no-knead bread method, so on to the pictures!
Jim Lahey suggests keeping the dough at 65 to 70 degrees for the 18 hour rise. So at night I bring the dough into the bedroom since it’s the warmest room in the apartment. Yes I sleep with my dough. You would do the same! I cannot believe how amazing this bread comes out! The crust is crisp and crackly while the inside is meaty and chewy. The book and the Internet don’t lie. Using this no-knead method is simple, easy to plan around, and comes out impressively professional tasting. Not to mention the smell of baking bread. I used to brew beer with my friends, so I’m very attached to the yeasty smell of bread.
So what can I show you? Here are some of the variations I’ve done and all were just as easy. I haven’t had a single bad bread yet!
This was a lighter bread with an easy breakaway crust. I got the recipe from Kneadlessly Simple: Fabulous, Fuss-Free, No-Knead Breads
I went sort of cinnamon crazy on this bread. Next time less cinnamon (or none) and I switched from measuring cups to a scale for getting my flour measurements more accurate. While you don’t need to be precise to get a good loaf, I admit the experts are right and scale weight measurements do lead to better bread.
I followed Lahey’s instructions to only do a 25% wheat flour to prevent the bread from being too dense. This was a delicious slightly grainier take on the original recipe. I might try to up the wheat flour in future batches and see what happens.
R and I can sit down with some cheese and wine and finish off a one of these rounds in one sitting! Would explain the bread rolls around my waist…however homemade bread doesn’t seem to keep very well. You cover it with a linen dishtowel or put it in a heavy paper bag, but once you cut into the bread it has a short shelf life. I did successfully revive a few left over pieces by toasting them in the oven the next day.
All this talking about bread, I have 5 minutes, off to get another batch ready!
Same Life, New Lens
Last January I justified buying a fancy (for me) digital camera, the Panasonic Lumix LX3. In order to make sure I used it I started a photo a day blog on January 26th with the plan to post one photo for an entire year. A few months late, and some extensive backdating, but I’ve done it! Come share in my year over at Same Life, New Lens!
I’ve learned a lot about digital photography and boy I still have so much more to go. I took the time to literally smell and photograph roses and find interesting angles even in mundane situations. Back when I was updating regularly some days it was really a struggle to take a photo I liked enough to post, but it made me work harder. Looking back over a year of photos I am surprised by how we can pack so much in a single year and the memories make me appreciate my time all the more.
On this blog I am still quite photo happy and can’t wait to drag my little camera with me on more adventures!
I take up the sail without waiting for dawn
It’s Spring! Go forth foolish dreamer!
The Cheerful Novice 