baking bonanza!

i've never been good at portion control. when i cook a dinner for two it usually ends up being more like a dinner for 4... so when i invited 15+ people over for appetizers and drinks i knew i had gotten myself into a bit of trouble. to complicate matters there were about 6 people who told me that they MIGHT be dropping by. hmmmmm.....

i ended up making WAY too much food (as usual) but was able to experiment with some new recipes which was a lot of fun.

i attempted domestic goddess' crispy truffle cookies.



the cookies turned out pretty good, very chocolatey, with a crispy outside and a chewy inside. the only downfall was that since i made them a couple of days before the event, they were a little stale when people actually got around to eating them. but they were very photogenic. =)

i also tried a recipe from the cupcake bakeshop, a website that i recently started reading. i love her experimental recipes and i just had to test out her recipe for thai tea cupcakes (recipe #0002).



although i wish the flavor of the thai tea was a little stronger, the texture and the color of the cupcakes turned out nicely. thanks chockylit! next on the test kitchen list are horchata cupcakes. =)

best of luck!

lw is heading out to nyc in a couple of days to start up a whole new adventure. her departure has been a whirlwind and even though we’re sad to see her go it’s very exciting to see one of our own blaze her own path. there was a little bit of trickery involved with getting her to her going away dinner but it definitely worth it in the end. =)

adventure girl challenge

things have been busy lately. don’t get me wrong… there are still lots of ideas and projects running through my head, but lately there has been very little time for execution. the very thin book sitting by my bed is getting dangerously close to becoming overdue, everything is in serious need of a good cleaning, and the holidays are fast approaching… i can’t seem to find the pause button. can someone please tell me where it is? =)

one of the more interesting things that i’ve gotten myself into in the past few months is the adventure girl challenge. it’s a triathlon of sorts… a run, bike, and kayak race that includes puzzles in between each leg of the race. there was absolutely NO swimming involved. yippie! those of you who know me, know that i am hydrophobic. don’t get me wrong… i like sitting by the water, looking at the water, being on top of the water… I just don’t like being IN the water. i saw this as my chance to participate in a multi event race without running the risk of drowning.

as usual there was little to no training leading up to the event. i think my compadres and I have adapted a kind of “of-course-we-can-do-this-without-training” kind of attitude which inevitably comes back to bite us in the rear end. anyway… once we were there we had a lot of fun. the bike portion of the race was uphill the ENTIRE way. or so it seemed to me… ;-) but the run and kayak portion were quite manageable. we escaped with just a couple of cuts and bruises and finished sort of in the middle of the pack.

we couldn’t have asked for better weather.
lake del valle, livermore… we’re thinking that we’ll have to go back and do some camping at this spot…


the bike pen. i learned that race etiquette is to turn your bike upside-down so it takes up less room in the staging area.


puzzle number three. you must traverse the zigzags while holding one end of the pvc pipe. no changing hands and no stepping off of the zigzag. it’s actually harder than it looks.

asparagus

Mouth watering!!!

I love sesame seeds.

rotting brain

instead of watching tv all the time (like i normally do) i'm trying to get back onto the reading wagon. i used to love to read and i think that i actually might have been addicted to it! now i'm on a more moderate pace and started with a weekend trip to the library where i picked up shopgirl a novel by steve martin. it's a very thin book an is so far an easy read which should ease me back into my old habit. =)

vote

remember to vote today! my polling place is usually a neighborhood garage. i like it because there is hardly ever a line/wait and the polling people are usually pretty friendly. should i switch my registration to my new address? hahaha...

tamales!!!

There's going to be an International Tamale Festival! They are going to try for records for the largest tamale, the most people eating the largest tamale and the largest tamale steamer. Hahahaha! Now I just have to convince someone to go with me.

needle felting

i don't know anything about needle felting. but if my project could produce something HALF as cute as kraf-o-la's then i need to learn (and learn quickly!)

martini is the cutest!

happy (belated?) halloween

can you say belated in reference to an occasion other than a birthday?

anyway...
fall is definitely here. the leaves are turning color, there's a slight chill in the air, it's starting to get dark early, and i can't seem to get away from the pumpkins! =)

lo and i headed out to the patch the other day to pick out some pumpkins for carving...



the patch was filled with families and kids trying to find that 'perfect' pumpkin. we noticed that some of the grownups were walking around with whole heads of lettuce in their hands and we were wondering where they came from. apparently a lot of the adults had decided to raid the adjacent farm field! can't take those grownups anywhere...



at the end of the day we each had our own freshly carved pumpkin. i decided to forgo the traditional jack o' lantern look and went for a patterned motif instead. it ended up looking ok in the light but by candlelight the design wasn't too visible.



since we ended up with two pumpkins worth of seeds we thought it might be fun to do a little roasting. lo's pumpkin was a bit unusal and had green seeds rather than the traditional white! but they all turned out quite tasty after some toasting. we did one sweet and one spicy batch.



my most recent cooking experiment is courtesy of cooking light. butternut squash is one of my favorite fall time veggies and so i decided to try out a soup recipe. the tureen housing the newfound recipe is courtesy of corndog and rootbeer. =)

Spicy West Indian Pumpkin Soup

1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
2 1/2 cups chopped peeled calabaza or butternut squash (about 1 pound)
1 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped celery
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons minced seeded Scotch bonnet or habanero pepper
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 teaspoons minced peeled fresh ginger
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 (15.75-ounce) cans fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
1 bay leaf

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add squash, onion, celery, pepper, and garlic; sauté for 5 minutes. Add remaining ingredients; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 25 minutes or until tender. Discard bay leaf.

Place half of the squash mixture in a blender, and process until smooth. Pour pureed mixture into a bowl; repeat procedure with remaining squash mixture. Return pureed mixture to pan; cook over medium heat 3 minutes or until heated.

*note*
since i don't care for celery i omitted it from the recipe. it didn't feel like it was missing anything so if i make it again i'll probably leave out the celery again. what am i going to do with a whole stalk of leftover celery anyways?

two small chilis i had in the pantry were subsitituted in for the Scotch bonnet/habanero peppers. i have no idea what kind of peppers it was that i used (maybe ancho?) but it gave the soup a nice kick without being too spicy. i also had some homemade chicken broth kicking around in the freezer so i used that rather than the canned stuff. i really don't know if there is a taste difference there. there probably wasn't since my homemade chicken broth never has any salt in it!

the last adaptation that i used is that i used a hand blender rather than sloshing all of those hot ingredients into a blender (which i actually don't own *gasp*) or the food processor. i've recently been introduced to the wonders of the hand blender and i can't stop using the darned thing!

so... happy (belated?) halloween