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I fell in love with the French Martini after trying a spin on it called a French Poodle at Yellow Dog Restaurant in Melbourne, Florida. It combines raspberry liqueur, pineapple juice and vodka into a fruity, frothy drink. The only thing that’s martini about it, is the glass. It is great anytime of year and [...]
Okay Mother Nature, stop being funny! Another freeze warning, no – not like the Cha-Cha Slide song. It’s one thing to cover up flower beds, but now I needed to devise a plan to cover up the seedlings in the garden and the tomato plants. The later took a bit of MacGyvering using materials on [...]
Happy Mother’s Day! This year for Mother’s Day, Dave and the kids got me (us) a Limequat tree! Limequat is a Key Lime grated onto a Kumquat. It’s been a whole two years, which feels like eternity to not have a fresh citrus growing at your house. The Key Lime tree was easily in the [...]
Baby food! Here’s some of our seeds coming up and we just planted a few days ago. Just in time for a potential frost this coming Sunday into Monday. Totally normal and mostly expected. Visit the National Climatic Data Center to find your local frost dates by city and state.
I was at the library with our daughter reading magazines and I grabbed this month’s Cook’s Illustrated to look at. I was happy to find our dutch oven was still a recommended buy! This is a plug for a product we love in our house. I bought this dutch oven four years ago as a [...]
Our girls love My Little Pony and ever since they saw the episode about Chimi Cherry or Cherry Changa – they wanted to make some. I decided I would surprise the girls with these as a treat on Cinco de Mayo. I first did a trial run with some friends at an early Cinco de [...]
Today we started our garden! We started two beds of vegetables and one bed of tomatoes. The weather should be in the mid to upper 60s to 70s for the next five to ten days, so we went for it. Last year we started Mother’s Day weekend and were pretty successful. For Zone 6, there’s [...]
This is what you get when you try to plant before May 1 in Zone 6 (find your zone)- frost warning. I went to Lowe’s and to buy some Basil and other herbs to plant with the girls. As we were planting them I realized I could take one basil plant and divided it up [...]
Dave and I needed a break from some projects around the house so we dropped the kids off with the grandparents and headed out to dinner. First we stop by Dive Bar and Grille and realized they were closed for a private function. One of the employees handed us a coupon for a free appetizer [...]
No, those aren’t hashbrowns! I knew I needed to toast some coconut for our Tres Leches Cake and I didn’t feel like warming the house and oven up just for a cup of coconut. Plus, I’m lazy so I figured it has to work right? Yay, it did – so here you go! Imagine the [...]
My oldest daughter LOVES deviled eggs and will find any excuse to have them. This past weekend she made some with her grandma for Easter and decorated them to look like chicks. With the remaining hard boiled eggs, we made a batch of deviled eggs to have at home! With just a little bit of [...]
I just missed entering the Serious Eats Pi Day contest in 2012, but not this year! You have to check the link out because one of the winners made an apple pie full of the digits of Pi! My Entry into 2013 Serious Eats Pi Day Contest at Instructables For 2013, I made Chocolate Cream [...]
The girls and I got a package the other day and besides the food inside there was…DRY ICE!!! Yes! Okay, so there was good food inside, but there was DRY ICE (solid carbon dioxide)! The girls have never seen dry ice before, so I quickly posted to Twitter asking for some ideas on what I [...]
As the snowflakes and freezing rain falls here in Pittsburgh, I look ahead to Zone 6 spring planting. Here’s a baby picture of our vegetable garden’s beginning on May 13, 2012. Underneath that gorgeous mix of topsoil and manure is a layer of newspaper to keep the weeds at bay. Learn more about the ‘No [...]
Saw this at the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum. I guess you can buy from Hot Topic/Amazon? Happy Caturday! Pin It
Our family’s new favorite way to get our veggies is by roasting them! It brings out a different level of flavor than just boiling or microwaving them. Toss in olive oil and cook at 425 to 450 degrees F in oven. Toss/flip while cooking. Works with frozen or fresh. I sometimes defrost the frozen veggies about [...]
Dear Aldi’s – I love you! Thank you. Thank you for promptly responding to my feedback about one of your bread products. Less than twenty four hours after I sent my request I had a response from Corporate Customer Service Department and then a response few days later from your supplier who was going to [...]
Dave mentioned he wanted to make brownies again. (He’s searching for the holy grail of chocolate brownies – not cake-like but moist and fudgy.) Dave asked me to help out since it was after dinner and two heads in the kitchen are better than one right? We do pretty well in the kitchen together doing [...]
I love Twitter, for a multitude of reasons. One of them is simply reaching out to someone you don’t know over something as silly as the Necronomicon. This quick little convo happened with Richard Stevens @rstevens of DieselSweeties.com. To this day, this is one my favoritest cakes that I made with my friend Christey! PS: [...]
My latest kitchen experiment has been homemade yogurt. I’ve made it four times already and with the exception of the first batch (fail), it’s all turned out perfectly! Once you have the process down it’s really easy to make your own yogurt. I literally woke up one morning and asked myself ‘Could I make my [...]
Straight from the kitchen to my blog. Cooking doesn’t have to be difficult, sometimes you just have to keep taking chances and voila – cooking for yourself can be really fun! We’re on night four of the largest pork loin EVER. No really, Dave said he bought the smallest one but we’ve had it for [...]
Quick! I actually squealed when I saw the Sistema Cubes on sale at Aldi’s this week. They’re a great way to ease into making lunch for your family! If part of your New Year’s resolutions is eating healthier, or maybe even saving money get to your local Aldi’s and save on Sistema Lunch Cubes (buy).They’re only [...]
Hungry for asian food, so what do you do? Scour the pantry and buy a cucumber! This is a summer favorite of ours but it is perfect warm or cold, hence why I am blogging about this in 60+ degree weather in JANUARY (Pittsburgh winter, huh?) Dave made this for dinner tonight and the recipe [...]
Attempting homemade yogurt. This will either turn out very bad – sour milk, or super yummy and cheap yogurt! For now, the yogurt is incubating inside a warmed crockpot under a couple beach towels in the laundry room. I should have a better idea how it worked out after dinner tonight. Links that helped me: [...]
We love wine in our house and one of the first wines we ever shared was a Riesling back in college. It rarely fails to disappoint and it goes with so many foods we like to cook here like Thai, chicken and pork dishes. Rieslings are our go to for thai food as the sweet [...]
Snow, snow and more snow means “Can we have some hot chocolate when we get inside?” Many times we make the Hot Cocoa recipe that’s on the side of a box of Hershey’s Cocoa, well I did not feel like waiting to warm up four cups of milk and stir, stir, stir. Well today I [...]
I was looking for a better way to pack lunches for the girls and wasn’t sure how much of an investment I wanted to make. I wanted to make the lunches the evening before to avoid the chaos of the morning rush. I looked at a bunch of different ‘bento’ type containers and then Dave [...]
Off-white sugar cookies are not the only cookies you can use for making cutout cookies. I wanted to change things up and try a Chocolate Cutout Cookie. We’ve been slowly amassing a pile a cookie cutters, so why not give it a shot with the kids? I really like the flavor and texture of the [...]
Thankful for our two little turkeys who made these table decorations. I tried a new type of crust this year. I substituted some of the vodka in the crust with some bourbon. Still a delicious, buttery, flaky crust. It smelled … Continue reading →
America’s Test Kitchen tweeted a really brilliant idea as part of their #QuickTip hashtag. TestKitchen: #QuickTip A stovetop is a better option than the microwave to reheat pizza. Place in a skillet, set burner to medium, cover, 5 mins. Boom! … Continue reading →
While out driving to and from school pickup, I was mulling over what cookie our daughter would bring to her school social. I’ve seen the Hershey’s Pumpkin Spice Kisses in the stores the last few weeks, and perused more than … Continue reading →
It’s been well over a year since I found a great food blog : Closet Cooking. I love everything about the site. The layout, the pictures and the food – OH the FOOD! The recipes are pretty easy and whenever … Continue reading →
I’ll be honest, when it comes to cooking we ‘wing’ it. I joke that every few weeks it’s like ‘Iron Chef’ because I need to come up with something using whatever odds and ends we have in the pantry. For … Continue reading →
Pamela’s. A staple since our college days for about 15 years now – wow, I feel old. Pamela’s was always a must visit even on trips back home. You can’t beat their unique crepe-style pancakes with the crispy outer edge … Continue reading →
I totally forgot to mention in my last post the awesomeness of Spaghetti Squash. (Thanks for the reminder @BT for #TVJunkFoodBlackout (post by Dietician Cassie). Our kids could not tell the difference between it and the whole grain and omega … Continue reading →
Oh hi there, it’s been awhile since I blogged on my own blog. Time has got me working on everyone else’s sites. I found myself with some free time, so here I am! This is one of our favorite recipes … Continue reading →
Since we moved back to Pittsburgh, we’ve heard quite a buzz about Nicky’s Thai Kitchen. For a restaurant that’s fairly close to us, we’ve had a hard time getting there. Finally, we put aside some time to go. Hands down … Continue reading →
A few weeks ago, we received a gift basket of all sorts of goodies from igourmet.com. Contained in it were wide variety of meats, cheeses, chocolates and other gourmet food items. Over the next couple of months you will see … Continue reading →
I mentioned in passing to a friend of ours about Pittsburgh Restaurant Week. We separately looked over the list of restaurants and Habitat immediately piqued our interest. What we thought was unique is that Habitat uses foods from the area … Continue reading →
POM Wonderful recently gave a few bloggers the opportunity to try out their new POM POMs Fresh Arils. Mine arrived just in time for Christmas weekend. They were a delicious addition to our family meals, and were great conversation starter … Continue reading →
I found this in my Facebook notes from 2009. I wanted to cite where I originally got it from, but it seems the site doesn’t exist anymore. Still a fun concept, and if you’re the originator, please let me know! … Continue reading →
Tis the season for baking again! I was on the hunt for a recipe I could do with the kids that was easy and festive. I found myself searching Hershey’s website for cookie recipes and that’s when my eye caught … Continue reading →
This is the last in a three part series about making your own coffee at home. When possible, we like to buy whole coffee beans and freshly grind them. Everyone agrees it just tastes better, and nothing beats the smell … Continue reading →
Welcome to the start of the day here in our house. When we decided to start making our own espresso at home, the next logical question was ‘What’s the best (cheapest) way to heat the milk?’ Adding milk straight from … Continue reading →
I’ve kept this secret far too long from my blog, and I have to share how awesome and easy homemade coffee can be. The reason for writing this is two-fold: One, I got this AWESOME Bialetti Italian stovetop espresso maker … Continue reading →
The kind people at MarxFoods.com sent me an email about a new giveaway they’re having over the next week. Maybe you’ll be interested in these Heirloom Potatoes they’re giving away. Head on over and enter today by answering this question … Continue reading →
One of the features of our the house we moved into was it had a garden, albeit it needed a bit of work, but we didn’t mind! A few months ago Dave started reading about vegetable gardening and composting. We … Continue reading →
Our MOMS club group is having a potluck snack as part of our monthly meeting, and since the temperature has been dropping like a rock I thought I’d bake something and warm our house up. One of my favorite quick … Continue reading →
