February | 2011 | strawberries in paris

A healthy berry muffin….

February 25, 2011 at 12:00 am | Posted in Dessert | 2 Comments

You see that?? I’m trying to be healthy! And its pretty much working! Even though I gained back all the weight I lost last year plus a couple, I have now lost 5 again! Thanks to spinning workouts at the FAC and exercise nights with Kendra + Jillian Michaels! And to keep up this exercising excitement I signed up for the Frederick Running Festival 5k! Can’t wait to be there with Steph and all of her and Jenn’s buddies! It really helps having a routine, like really helps… and shrinking my stomach a little bit by eating smaller meals during the day is working. Can’t live without my Trader Joe’s peppermint tea, Chobani and Sabra hummus!

So ok back to baking… Because I had leftover really good local buttermilk from the scones I made, I wanted to make some other treat. I love having something sweet to eat for breakfast and it was important to me to have it semi-healthy. This recipe fit the bill!

And they turned out pretty purty! With the exception of the strawberries I added, the fruit was perfect and you could hardly tell there was whole wheat flour in there!

Continue Reading A healthy berry muffin…….

A evening with Nick Malgieri

February 23, 2011 at 10:42 pm | Posted in Appetizer, Cookbooks, Dessert, Dinner, Entertainment | 7 Comments

and a bunch of my other best bloggy friends in the world! See what great friends?? All so colorful and purty, and damn am I tall! It was such a wonderful night to learn about Nick’s new cookbook – Bake and be able to hear his thoughts about baking and eat awesome food prepared by all. This cookbook really is like a Joy of Cooking for baking because its breadth ranges from breads to cupcakes to pastries (20 different chapters!). One special recipe I spotted in the cookbook was conchas. They are Mexican sweet roll pastries with a sweet sugar topping arranged to look like a shell. It’s abuelitas favorite Mexican pastry and I can’t wait to make them! Possibly for Mother’s Day??? Nick spoke alot about how it was important to him to have action pictures in this cookbook and so he went with an English publishing company that would allow such a thing! I asked him what the best simple recipe in the book was – the individual coconut cakes. 7 ingredients and it takes 5 minutes to prepare. Sounds like the perfect thing to make my coconut loving sister! I can’t wait to try out those two recipes and use it as a reference for the simpler kinds of baking (breads, pie crusts, etc). Everyone who attended the party got a copy of the cookbook and now its all signed and beautiful – so nice! So now go for the jump to see what we ate! Continue Reading A evening with Nick Malgieri…

Burgers and BBQ with Bernadette

February 18, 2011 at 8:00 am | Posted in Dinner, Travels | 4 Comments

A couple of weeks ago I headed down to Baltimore to celebrate my good friend Bernadette’s 26th birthday! This is the third year I have been able to celebrate her birthday and I am so thankful to have such a cheery and fun friend in my life. She had mentioned that she had never been to Nacho Mama’s and so we decided we would try to go there for dinner that night. Lo and behold that was the night of the Natty Boh keg tapping! There was no way in heck we were going to get into that establishment so we turned around and headed to the next best place to get good eats in Canton. JD’s.

I’ve been here a couple of times, one night while we were bar hopping and another when we were watching the Ravens final game two seasons ago. I really like it because there is so much room there to spread out! Not really common for a Canton bar. And the food is pretty good too, check it out!

Continue Reading Burgers and BBQ with Bernadette…

January Charm City Cookbooking: Jose Andres

February 16, 2011 at 9:01 am | Posted in Appetizer, Cookbooks, Entertainment | 14 Comments

Hola amigos! So at the end of last month, Alayne hosted cookbook club and chose Jose Andres new cookbook: A Taste of Spain in America!

I would also like to remember that night as “The day we had a photo shoot and the day I took two hours to make croquetas from scratch!”

See? Yum and time consuming croquetas…

And here was our photog (ahem, photographer!) taking pictures of me and everybody else while I was frying up the croquetas!

So hop on over to our Charm City Cookbook Club Blog and see Alayne’s marvelous write up!

and go for the jump and see the croqueta recipe!

Continue Reading January Charm City Cookbooking: Jose Andres…

Sisterly Love on Valentine’s Day

February 14, 2011 at 7:00 am | Posted in Appetizer, Brunch, Dessert, Entertainment | 7 Comments

Love love love is in the air! Hope this find you full of love today, whether it be from within, or from your siblings, mother, father, grandparents or that special someone. This Saturday I had a Tea Lunch at the house and Jen, my cousin, her sister Rebecca, my sister Laurita and my roomate Jenn were all there!

I stopped at the Stone Hearth bakery to get some bread for the finger sandwiches and could not resist these pink heart sugar cookies. And they were very tasty too! The bakery was full of tasty treats and realllllllly good looking bread (the french white I got tasted wonderful!), I can’t wait to go back!

In addition to the love from “my sisters,” I can’t wait to share some love with Neddy this upcoming weekend. Ned had an interview in Boston last Friday and was well received at the consulting firm! Keep your fingers crossed! And know what today is?? His Birthday!!! Happy Birthday Darling Bunny! I am taking him to VOLT on Friday for lunch! Lots to celebrate!

So if you would like, go for the jump and see the lunch my sisters and I shared on Saturday!

Continue Reading Sisterly Love on Valentine’s Day…

Loving on the LT Burger

February 11, 2011 at 8:00 am | Posted in Dinner, Travels | 5 Comments

I only say loving on, because, well, some of our food was R-rated. Jigga what???
Well first off, we were wandering about Sag Harbor and were trying to decide between two places, LT Burger won out, because Bossy Bissy just wanted something hip. And hip we got! LT Burger was more hip and delicious than I ever expected! Delicious meat, very tasty milkshakes and a really cool space. What more could you ask?

Go for the jump now!

Continue Reading Loving on the LT Burger…

Wordless Wednesday: Our Stoop Storyteller

February 9, 2011 at 8:00 am | Posted in Entertainment | Leave a comment

Start your day with Edna Mae!

February 7, 2011 at 7:00 am | Posted in Brunch | 9 Comments

Two Wednesday’s ago we had a snow day in Frederick! Do you see the snow out the window? I promise its not a dirty window! I just love this mug, as it combines my two favorite funny things, strawberries and bunnies. I call Ned “Bunny” sometimes and well, you know I love strawberries! KT helped me find it in Portland last February!

Anyways, in addition to oogling at glassware next to snowy windows, I made pancakes! Since I knew I wasn’t going to work (I did it at home! wahoo!) I wanted to make a breakfast treat for Jen and me. I searched my cookbooks high and low for something fast and easy. And of course Ree saved the day, she always does that!

This recipe comes from the grandmother in law of the Pioneer Woman, Edna Mae. These babies are reason enough to have a stockpile of sour cream in your fridge in the winter, just in case you have a snow day on your hands! So go see my step by step pictures and please, go buy some sour cream.

Continue Reading Start your day with Edna Mae!…

Cream Cheese Celebrations

February 4, 2011 at 7:00 am | Posted in Brunch, Dessert | 4 Comments

Thats right, in two occasions I celebrated the existence of cream cheese!

Riiiighht Elizabeth… So maybe I celebrated the birth of my Aunt Helen and the birth of my friend James’ daughter Lila! Either way, they were both born in January and both of their celebratory cakes used cream cheese icing! And a cake with cream cheese icing is a cake I want to eat!

Oh baby oh baby. So abuelita was all about surprising Auntie Helen with a birthday party for her 50th birthday. Auntie Helen had to go and ruin it somehow (silly Auntie Helen) and so it got changed to a birthday brunch! So we had cake for brunch! (and a bunch of normal brunchy American breakfast things and some mexican food too!)

Thats a pretty good looking cake, eh? Abuelita made the cake part earlier in the week. Actually she made TWO different red velvet cake recipes, one of them by Pioneer Woman and one from an old newspaper clipping. The crumb from the pioneer woman cake was much finer and a little drier than the other one. Abuelita gave me the task of frosting them and because the pioneer woman one turned out prettier, we ate that cake! Grandma has this fun comb tool to make the pretty lines, it worked out nicely.

So on to the next cake… James‘s wife Kristen was due in early February with their first child. Since James is my buddy, I wanted to somehow celebrate that at work! So a month before her due date, I started getting everybody together to organize a pot luck one Friday for lunch. It turns out that miss Lila was affecting Kristen’s body in such a way that she needed to come out! So like 17 hours later Lila was born and we had to postpone the “shower” lunch! James was back to work a week later and then we got to feast! Before all of this happened, I was prodding him for his taste in cake. His friend Tricia had just started a food blog (a lovely one at that) and he remarked how good her cupcakes looked! I forgot that they were gingerbread cupcakes instead of chocolate cupcakes and decided to use my standard chocolate cupcake recipe, courtesy of Ina. (you see I don’t read…you remember this, no?) I then realized I had these little pink bunny sprinkles in the pantry and so a white icing was required!