Archive for the ‘food’ Category

Ripe Tomatoes!!

July 27th, 2010
11 Comments

Our tomatoes have finally started to ripen. It was agony to see the mounds and mounds of green fruit on those bushes for weeks, just waiting for the day they’d be ripe & ready to eat. I kept thinking, tomorrow’s the day! And inevitably tomorrow wasn’t the day.

The pear tomatoes are as delicious & sweet as I remember. The red tomato just ripened today, so I’m definitely planning on making some sandwiches with it tonight. It was a TON of work to keep those tomato plants alive, but so worth it. It really makes me appreciate all of my mom’s planning & hard work with the garden she kept when I was growing up. Gosh, she grew thornless blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, beans, peas, corn, tomatoes, zucchini, squash and cucumbers! We even had peach, pear, plum & apple trees at one point. There’s nothing like fresh produce. MMm!

Right now I’m in full-on Blogher mode; so from here on out posts might be a tad sporadic and a little heavy on the before & after refashion stuff. Hope you don’t mind!

DIY Ice Cream Pops

July 19th, 2010
5 Comments

Yesterday we invited Chris’s brother & sister over for a little Sunday feast. We had a great time & the food turned out delicious. I made (with the help of Chris) sticky ribs, a variation of this tomato feta salad (no fresh toms, yet!), fresh corn on the cob, fresh-squeezed lemonade & strawberry mango ice cream (just like the linked recipe, but fewer strawberries & chopped mango). If the weather had been cool enough we probably would’ve eaten outside, but it was too blasted hot.

I love my ice cream maker. I’ve had it for a little over 2 years & I still love it. It’s so nice that I don’t have to use ice or rock salt, so I can make ice cream/sorbet whenever I want. The only thing that sucks about it is I usually make too much ice cream liquid & as the ice cream sets, it expands & spills out the top. It can get pretty messy if I don’t have a spoon & a hungry husband on hand.

Yesterday I thought I’d try something a little different. See, when the ice cream starts to overflow, it’s partially set, perfect for making popsicles. I didn’t have the time/desire to go out on a Sunday and get some popsicle forms, so I improvised. I snagged a bunch of cupcake liners & trimmed bamboo skewers to the appropriate length. I lined a tupperware with cupcake liners & spooned the half-set ice cream into each liner. Then, I stuck a bamboo skewer in each cupcake and put my popsicles in the freezer to set.

My crazy hair-brained idea worked! We have delicious deformed popsicles!! I have a few more ideas of different ways to do popsicles without popsicle forms and still make them pretty, I think I might need to make some more ice cream pops soon.

How was your weekend? What’s your favorite thing to make on a hot day?

Curiously Strong Peppermint Patties

June 15th, 2010
11 Comments

Last weekend I found a recipe for homemade york peppermint patties that only calls for 3 ingredients with an optional 4th. It’s definitely my kind of recipe! I had to give it a go. Mine didn’t turn out nearly as beautiful or small as the ones in the recipe. Mine also (probably) turned out a LOT stronger than hers, too. I think my brain fell asleep at the wheel when I was adding the peppermint because they’re UBER strong. They’re so strong, you only want to take very small bites at a time. They’re still good, though.

I packaged three of them to give to some ladies I visit & couldn’t help but use my neon orange vellum envelopes for the packaging.

I’m definitely going to give this recipe another try sometime, but I’ll certainly pay more attention when I’m adding the peppermint.

Strawberry Lemonade Cupcake Recipe

May 13th, 2010
26 Comments

Monday night I made the most delicious cupcakes ever. They were so delicious, some folks in the tweetiverse even asked for the recipe. I was very flattered to see the response. So here it is.

How to Make Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes:

  • Make the fluffy white cake from epicurious. (this makes over 3 1/2 doz cupcakes, so you may want to half the recipe). I’m sure any white cake recipe would do, but I really like this one.
  • Fill cupcake cups with a heaping spoonful of batter and bake at 350º for 15-17 minutes.
  • Allow cupcakes to cool. Put the cupcakes in an airtight container and allow to rest for a few hours or overnight. If you don’t cover the cupcakes, they’ll dry out!
  • Make the lemon curd recipe from epicurious. You’ll want to half the recipe if you don’t want loads of leftovers & even if you’re making the full 3 1/2 dozen cupcakes. You could always just buy the curd if you wanted to.
  • Poke a hole in the middle of each cupcake using the back of a fork or knife.
  • Fill pastry bag with lemon curd & fill each hole with curd.
  • Make strawberry lemon icing (recipe below).
  • Fill pastry bag or plastic bag with frosting and frost each cupcake.
  • Garnish cupcakes with sliced strawberries just before serving.

Strawberry Lemon Icing
from the kitchen of Melissa Esplin
makes enough to frost about 1 1/2 dozen cupcakes

1 tablespoon lemon juice
4-6 fresh strawberries
1 cube or 1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cups powdered sugar

Puree strawberries & lemon juice in a blender. Allow strawberries to macerate for about 10 minutes; it helps with the flavor. With a hand mixer beat strawberry mixture, butter and sugar until consistency is smooth. You may want to add more sugar or more lemon juice to get your preferred consistency. Frosting is perfect for sugar cookies, cupcakes, cakes, etc.

Hope you like them! Let me know if you have any questions about the recipe. I used the fluffy white cake recipe for Penelope’s birthday cake. It was really good, but I think this recipe works better as a cupcake. I don’t know what it is, but that’s just how I feel about it. Enjoy!!

Penelope’s Birthday Party Part II

May 5th, 2010
17 Comments

The party was organized chaos. I didn’t take very many photos of the festivities, but I did manage to document the food table. We had Bee’s lemon water (a delicious homemade beverage that’s clear – perfect for living room dining), pulled pork sandwiches, clementines, bananas, cut veggies, chips and cake. The food was all pretty low-key except for the cake, which took a few hours to make entirely from scratch. I made a white cake with lemon curd and lemon frosting. It was deliciously moist and dense. MMM! I’ll make it again and share the recipe with you, if you’d like.

I used the Silhouette to cut a P out of paper to use as a stencil for the decorative sugar. It kind of looks gritty as if I spray painted the P on there. I like that.

I kept the decorations simple by using balloons and a handmade garland using the same paper I used for the envelopes. It was really easy to make. If you’d like a tutorial for the garland, comment! I was going to make the vellum mobiles as seen on Oh Happy Day, but I didn’t have enough time to run to the store for more paper, so I opted to make the strips into a garland instead. The vellum mobiles would’ve looked really rad, had time been on my side. I also made Penelope’s party favors using the envelope paper and a variation on the petal box template (cut with the Silhouette). I filled the boxes with hard lemon candies and candy orange slices.

The festivities were really simple: eating and dancing. It was great to keep things simple, otherwise it would’ve been like hearding cats. Plus, after spending so much time on the invitations, I wasn’t about to plan a creative party curriculum. I’m much too lazy for that. The kidlets enjoyed dancing, screaming, fighting over balloons and playing hide and seek in the ikea garbage cans that we use for storing Penelope’s toys. I say it was a great success! Also, the kids were so entertained, us parents had a great time catching up.


Click here to read part I: The Invitation

Click here to read part III: The Thank Yous

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