Contest!

Ok so one of my favorite food blogs is running a contest. They are looking for a guest poster. What you have to do is submit your recipe, a picture, and a 500 word story about your recipe. I so want to enter, I don't really have time to come up with something new for this right now, so I have to use a recipe I posted on here in the last year or so. Which one should I choose?!?!

My top contenders:
Eggplant
Cinnamon Rolls
Pumpkin Cookies
Whole Wheat Pancakes

I have a lot of favorites that didn't make my top list, but this is stressful because I feel like the picture of the food matters a lot. I also feel like since it's about to be summer that matters too. Pumpkin cookies for a post that will make it's appearance in June...probably not going to happen. So I think I am leaning toward the eggplant or pancakes. I think I could make the best story for the cinnamon rolls, but I don't know how summery those are. Ugh...the life of a wannabe food blogger...HELP!

Wedding Brain

I think I am diagnosing myself with a severe case of wedding brain. Well, really it's not severe, but it's a case nonetheless. I have crazy wedding dreams on the regular these days. Mostly no one comes to the reception after they have RSVPed that they will. Last night I went to try on my dress and they ordered the wrong one and my hair was a hot mess. The top dream is about cupcakes. Cupcakes and cupcake display options are constantly on my brain.

You may remember from this post that I thought I had all our cake decisions figured out. Well there were problems. Although I kept it a secret in that post, we had decided to do cupcakes instead of a big tiered cake. When we decided we were going to do cupcakes I really wanted my cousin-in-law to make them, but my mom said she was already doing a wedding the day before mine and it probably wouldn't work, so I emailed the bakery we got cake samples from to make them. To make a long story short...the bakery we thought we were using would not get back to me. After perusing a few options a miracle occurred...Kelsey (the cousin-in-law) said she could do them! YAY!

To understand why I have crazy recurring dreams about cupcakes you might need to know that I am not a huge fan of cupcakes as a wedding cake. So then why would I do it? Well I don't really like cake that much to begin with and when I do like cake it's a weird flavor. So by doing cupcakes you can have a lot of flavors so that everyone can find something they like, and I can have my fun flavors. My main source of worry is the cupcake display. I really don't like that whole tiered, I'm trying to make this look like a cake, display. Don't like in this case really means despise. So currently I am constantly thinking of an interesting way to display cupcakes. Any thoughts, pictures, ideas are appreciated! Anyone else have crazy wedding dreams?

Recipe of the Week!

Sausage and Pea Risotto

I had always wanted to make risotto, but heard it was difficult and tedious. A while ago one of the blogs I stalk posted this recipe so I decided to try it. It really wasn't bad. The worst part was that I made the fatal mistake of trying to get arborio rice at Safeway instead of driving to Wegmans. Being a far inferior grocery store, Safeway didn't sell arborio rice, so I was in the aisle googling a a substitute and bought barley instead of rice. I think this made my recipe healthier and it still tasted good. So overall risotto making is pretty easy, maybe just a little time consuming. Enjoy!

Ingredients:
1 package of pre-cooked italian sausage, sliced crosswise into 1/4″ thick pieces
3/4 cu frozen peas
1 cu risotto rice (arborio)...I substituted barley
2 cu chicken broth
1 cu dry white wine (nothing too terribly sweet, I used a chardonnay)
1/2 lg onion, chopped
1/2 cu grated parmesan cheese

Process:
In a large pot brown sausage slices over med-hi heat with a tablespoon or so of extra virgin olive oil. Set aside browned sausage slices on a paper towel lined plate to drain off fat. In the same pot add more olive oil & saute chopped onion until translucent. Add your rice to the onion & continue to cook over med-hi heat while stirring to lightly toast the rice. Add a cup of wine & turn down heat to medium, stirring well & cook until wine is absorbed, about 2 minutes. Next add a cup of chicken broth & repeat the process…adding chicken broth a cup or so at a time, letting it cook down & then adding more. You’ll do this for about 15 minutes or until the rice is tender. Once the rice is cooked add in frozen peas & a bit more liquid if it seems dry & cook for another 2 minutes. Return sausage to pot as well as the parmesan cheese & season well with salt & pepper.

Summer Reading

Hi Friends! I know I haven't posted in awhile...it's been a busy week. My plan is to give you some wedding updates and a new recipe this weekend. In the meantime...I want to know if you have any good reading suggestions! I have been meaning to read Jodi Picoult's newest book all spring and I am also going to read the book she co-authored with her daughter. I have been hearing a lot about this alleged "Shades of Grey"trilogy. Any thoughts or reviews on that? Send me your suggestions!!!

City Garden Season 2

Tomato plants, herb box, and the good old lemon tree

Last summer I planted a "city garden" on my balcony. I was pretty excited to do the same thing again this summer and incorporate my lessons learned. Of course we have our lemon tree. I wish that thing would grow some more of it's leaves back, but we are constantly battling each other about something. I imagine it something like having a teenager. In the earth box this year I decided to go with just two tomato plants. This year I bought more mature plants in the hope that we get actual tomatoes earlier. I felt like we were getting tomatoes into December last year. Hopefully this strategy helps. I also brought back the herb box we had last year. This year we are doing parsley, basil, cilantro, and apple mint. Matt would not leave the gardening store without the apple mint.  What we will do with it, I have no idea, but it does smell good. 

Hens and Chicks

Lastly I did a pot of hens and chicks. I did two plants in a pot and I'm hoping since they are ground cover they will take over the whole pot and look really cool. They are already starting to sprout off so it might just work. For those of you who haven't heard...hens and chicks are the main flower, well I guess plant, in our wedding. I hope they don't look like this since I want mostly the lime green color, but they didn't have that at the store. Anyway I thought it would be cool to have some. 

I planted everything about two weeks ago. I really didn't think that the temperatures were going to get so low again. It's been a little bit of a pain really. I have had to move the plants in and out of our little water heater room on the balcony so they don't freeze. Reminiscent of the hurricane event in late August. Except right now its like an every night event. Hopefully the temperatures get warm and stay warm in the next few days. So maybe I didn't learn enough lessons last year? 

Recipe of the Week!

Bourbon Street Chicken

This chicken is delicious! I have made it twice recently. The recipe was originally recommended to me by my Boo. The first time I made it I made 2 pounds of chicken, but doubled the sauce ingredients because I knew I was going to use the cornstarch to make it a little more dense. I highly recommend doing this if you like sauce, especially thick sauce. I also used red wine instead of water. After eating it the first time I adjusted the amount of soy sauce for the second time. I thought it was really over powering. What I have below is the way I make it. If you want the real recipe you can find it here. 

Ingredients:

2 pounds boneless chicken breasts; cut into bite-size pieces
1 tablespoon olive oil; (1-2)
2 garlic cloves; crushed
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes
3/4 cup apple juice
2/3 cup light brown sugar
4 tablespoons ketchup
2 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 cup water (or red wine)
1/3 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons cornstarch; (if thick sauce desired)...I think I probably did more than this. I just kept adding until it was the consistency I wanted.

Preparation:

Heat oil in a large skillet. Add chicken pieces and cook until lightly browned. Remove chicken. Add remaining ingredients to skillet, heating over medium heat until well blended and dissolved. Add chicken and bring to a hard boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes uncovered. Serve over hot rice.

This is JEOPARDY!

You might recall that the tenants of 709 have a love for all things Jeopardy. Well you can imagine my reaction when we found out that Jeopardy was coming to DC for a few tapings. I promptly went to My Eye Doctor to get a ticket request form (as well as an eye exam and the new glasses pictured below) and sent it off waiting and hoping. I waited and waited for my self addressed, stamped envelope to make it's way back to the east coast with tickets and finally on the first day of my fabulous spring break it did! We got tickets for the Friday evening taping! 

It was pretty much all I had ever hoped for, with one exception. I will get my complaint out of the way first. It was advertised that they were taping a sort of celebrity, power players edition. Well on Friday they were still taping the finals of the Teen Tournament. A little bit of a bummer, but no big deal. It was still pretty cool to see the very, very excited teen win (aren't you so jealous I know the results of the Jeopardy Teen Tournament!?!?). Anyway, we stood in line with a lot of interesting (nicest way to put it) people for what felt like forever, and then we got some pretty good seats. It was interesting to watch all the behind the scenes preparation too. We also met the Clue Crew (wow, I sound like such a dork).

The highlights of the taping include Alex telling stories and taking questions during the commercial breaks and the most surprising thing of all...Alex making a big mistake. When he was giving a clue he accidently gave away the answer. It was hilarious. We had to stop the taping and he said that he had only ever done that a few times in the history of Jeopardy. It was really funny he tried to just keep going and do whatever back-up plan they have for this, but the producer had to stop him and they had to edit over what was already taped. 

I can't wait to see our episodes air. Tune in on May 10th and 11th to see the finals of the Teen Tournament, and see if you can pick out where Alex made his mistake :)