Soooo behind!

I am so behind on posts it's not even funny.  To catch up quickly, I will add pictures and short descriptions of what I have been up to in the kitchen!

I got this cute thing for 50 cents at a church rummage sale recently. I felt so lucky to find it!

This was my first stab at scalloped potatoes. Spencer asked for them, and when you take me to the World Series, you get what you want!

These are some yummy chocolate chip cookes I made the same night as the potatoes.  I used Trader Joes chocolate chips and followed the recipe on the back. 

We picked up this butternut squash a few weeks ago when we went to a pumpkin farm in Half Moon Bay to get our pumpkins for carving.  We still have it.  I'm looking forward to roasting it!

These are some yummy pumkin apple pancakes I made last Sunday morning.  Yummm!!! I found the recipe in the November issue of Sunset Magazine.

Carving pumpkins in the living room watching our Giants win the World Series in 4 games.  Sweep, baby!!!

I got this cake pan on clearance at Michaels for $2.99! Even though it was after Halloween, on Friday I used the leftover canned pumpkin from the pancakes to make pumpkin bread in it.  It just happened to be Dia de los Muertos, so I guess we celebrated without meaning to!

When we were at the World Series I saw a girl selling hair clips like this on the sidewalk.  I wanted to buy one, but I knew I could make something just as cute.  This is my first stab at it, and I can't wait to wear it to a game next season!

When life gives you overripe bananas...

...make banana bread! Or, in this case, banana muffins.

A friend of my mom's once said that whenever she has three overripe bananas she makes banana bread, since that is just the amount of banana you need to make it.  My mom actually forgets this statement, but I have always remembered it.  This week, I found myself with several bananas that were too ripe to still be appetizing.  I have a Better Homes &
Gardens baking book that has a banana bread recipe that looked good.  It ended up taking 4 bananas, since this specific recipe calls for 1 1/2 cup of mashed banana.  It was my first time trying this recipe, and it was great! The muffins were very moist and banana-y.

The Halloween cupcake cups and toothpicks are a seasonal touch, thanks to my mom who knows I love this time and year.  She came to visit me the night I made these, so I sent some home with her for my dad and brother.  I set some aside for Spencer, and I brought the rest to work.  They were a big hit with my co-workers!

Hopefully, now you will see brown bananas as an opportunity instead of something to be thrown out in the trash or compost!

Today I love the...

Smell of: Tea

Sound of: This American Life podcast

Taste of: Orbitz Berry Remix gum

Sight of: Sun

Feel of: New haircut

 

Good Things about Today:
- I'm seeing Spencer tonight and making dinner for him

- Today is my parents' 31st anniversary

- I got to sleep in a little this morning

- It's warm outside

-It's October, my favorite month!

1950sHousehusbandWannabe?

Last weekend Spencer took the reins on dinner and earned his own little play on my 1950shousewifewannabe domain name (is that what it's called??)

Saturday was move in day into my new apartment.  My parents, Spencer and I spent much of the day packing up at my parents house and unpacking at the apartment. Spencer took care of a lot the heavy lifting and helped my dad put together some furniture.  My mom and I got my new kitchen set up, and washed all my dishes and cookware which had been in storage for a few years.  Spencer left after a while to shop for the dinner he so nicely offered to make me that night. 

I had an idea that he was making steak salad.  We had seen some recipes in his Men'sHealth magazine that he was excited to try.  When I walked into his house, hot and exhausted, it smelled like a restaurant.  I was so impressed!! There was Spencer, standing at the counter chopping and making this awesome presentation.

He had grilled some skirt steak, chopped up onions and added bleu cheese. The salad was topped with a tasty balsamic vinaigrette. Notice the separate tomatoes. Spencer doesn't like tomatoes, but was thinking of maybe trying some mixed in with the other ingredients.  That way they wouldn't be so tomato-y:)  He didn't want to fully commit by mixing them into his salad.  He picked up some great French bread and we shared a bottle of red wine from our Carmel winetasting trip.  This salad was so delicious and what made it better was that I didn't have to do a thing!

New love

I'm in love.  And not only with Spencer.  A new cupcake has come into my life!

A few weeks ago I picked up the Martha Stewart Cupcake Book at the library.  The whole book is full of yummy recipes and cute cupcake decorating ideas.  It's not only all about cupcakes either.  There are some recipes for cute individual cheesecakes in cupcake cups which I plan to try.  I made copies of a few favorites and one of them was the snickerdoodle cupcake.  I got a chance to try it last night, as today is a co-worker's birthday and I volunteered to bake rather than get a storebought sheet cake (gag).

These cupcakes were made completely from scratch, including the frosting, and doing that really isn't that much more difficult than using a box mix.  I was a little worried about them turning out right, since it was my first time with the recipe and I was making them for an audience other than Spencer or my family who still have to love me even if what I make comes out gross. As soon as I tasted them I knew this would be my new go-to cupcake for special occasions.  They are amazing!!  The sugar/butter/cinnamon flavor combo is so simple and wonderful.  Just like the easy-to-make cookies of the same name. Ahhhh...so good!

The frosting suggested in this recipe is Martha Stewart's 7 Minute Frosting, also found in her cupcake book.  That frosting is kind of meringue-y and hardens as it dries.  I pictured it as those airy meringue cookies that turn to powder in your mouth.  I didn't think that sounded very good on top of a cupcake, so instead I used my mom's tried and true homemade frosting recipe.  To be honest, I actually just had her make it.  This recipe is eyeballed amounts of butter, milik, powdered sugar and vanilla mixed until they are at the perfect consistency.  Sometime it's dense, but this time it was light and airy and fabulous!!

The party for my co-worker is today at 4:30pm.  Instead of doubling the recipe, which would have given me close to 60 cupcakes, I made 1 1/2 times the recipe, so I ended up with about about 35.  There was a bit of batter left over, but by that time I had enough cupcakes and just wanted to go to bed.  I probably have could gotten just over 40 if I kept going.  Of course I set 4 aside for Spencer, which he will be getting tonight, in addition to my Greek chicken and squash kabobs, lemon-almond orzo and yogurt sauce.  That's a whole other blog post!

Cookie time!

Have I mentioned what a lucky guy Spencer is? When we met, he didn't screen me by asking if I like to cook and bake, but he definitely lucked out in that department! I cook dinner for him frequently, but I haven't been baking as much as I would like to.  This week I decided to try making a new cookie, incorporating white chocolate chips along with semisweet.  I had some white chocolate chips lying around by accident.  Around Christmastime, I was at home baking with my mom, and we sent my dad to the store.  We handed him a sheet of paper with two recipes on it and he bought all the stuff for the wrong one.  Oops! I like using up ingredients I have and these cookies seemed like a good way to do it.

I asked Spencer about it first, so that I wouldn't waste time making something he wouldn't eat, and he said it sounded good!  They are good! And so was the dough.  I ate a ton of it!

 
Spencer gets them tomorrow.  He got cookies from my mom yesterday, but I'm sure those are all gone by now and he will be ready for a new batch!

DIY Birthday

This weekend we went to a BBQ to celebrate Spencer's sister's birthday.  In place of wine or any other hostess gift, she asked people to bring diapers for a shelter in her area that she has been donating to.  We brought a package of diapers, but I wanted to bring something festive as well.

I have seen flower cakes around for a long time and had never gotten the chance to make one. They look so great in pictures.  Doing a whole cake can take a lot of flowers and get really expensive, so I decided to just do a slice of cake.  Next time I do this I will use "flatter" flowers.  These carnations have a bulbous thing underneath the flower that make them stick up above the floral foam, exposing it.  Flowers like daisies would create a flatter, cleaner look.  Oh well, next time!

I also utililzed some stickers and scrapbooking embellishments to make this card.

Some homemaker idols

Today is Julia Child's 100th birthday! I know this because of Google's daily image, and it seemed like a relevant thing to post about.  Julia's cooking style is a little sophistocated and time consuming for me, but she was one of the first female cooks to bring cooking into people's homes with cooking shows.  So for that, happy birthday, Julia!

The other day I was wearing a cardigan, black pants cropped at the ankle and ballet flats.  My mom told me I looked just like Laura Petrie from the Dick Van Dyke Show.  I thought it was a great compliment! She's a more modern housewife than those of the Lucy and Ethel variety, and I love her style!