The past week has been full of A LOT of Mexican food - which is in no
way a bad thing. I still don't understand how restaurants in
Massachusetts can't duplicate the flavors of Texas, but that is the
way it is.
Our adventurous day began in Brooklyn...
...and quickly moved to Manhattan.
We walked around Union Square,
brunched at Petite Abeile,
and headed uptown!
We saw the outside of Radio City Music Hall,
got pushed around underneath the Christmas tree,
and pushed around even more in Times Square.
Then we visited my precious friends from the Hundred Acre Wood at the New York Public Library. If you ever want to go, it's on 42nd street. I've visited these friends every time I've been in the big city. Can you find Stanley?
I can't wait to be a first grade teacher...
This past weekend, we visited the glorious New York City at Christmastime. It was our first time there during the holiday season, and boy was the city hustling and bustling. It was fun, though, and our friend Katherine showed us a wonderful time! Our first night in, she took us to a wonderful seafood restaurant, Sel de Mer, where we had an amazing butternut squash risotto and mahi-mahi. It was super wonderful!
As it turned out, one of the most interesting features of this restaurant, for us at least, was the menu. The menus were stylish and eco-friendly - they used recycled old books as a cover, and placed the hand-written specials inside along with their regular menu. The spectacular part was what appeared on the cover of Jamie's menu:
And the crazy thing was, that out of all of the people dining in the restaurant (it was full), they delivered that menu to our table - and out of the three people dining at our table, they put it in front of Jamie. Weird, no?
I guess you have to also know that Jamie goes to MIT, if you don't already.
I just thought it was fun :)
I'll post more NYC pics soon, and they will feature our new friend Stanley!
Here's the recipe for some yummy crab dip I made for book club two weeks ago!
Ingredients:
1 8-oz package cream cheese, softened
2 6-oz cans crab meat
1/4 c. diced green onion
1/4 to 1/2 of a mild green chili pepper (Anaheim pepper), minced
1/4 to 1/2 of a jalapeno pepper, minced
1/4 t. salt
1/4 t. white pepper
2 T. shredded parmesan
cayenne Pepper
chopped fresh parsley
1 fresh lemon or lemon juice, if desired.
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to broil. Combine the cream cheese, crab meat, green onion, minced peppers, salt, white pepper, and lemon juice (if desired) in a bowl. Spread the mixture into the bottom of an oven-safe dish. You want to have a thin layer of dip. Sprinkle the parmesan over the top, and broil until the cheese on top begins to brown. Sprinkle the parsley and cayenne pepper over the top.
If desired, you can squeeze a little lemon juice on top as well. Serve with blue tortilla chips.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJiCFE3EFF4?wmode=transparent]
For the very first time, I made homemade stuffing PW style (I used her recipe)- from scratch! My previous experience is with boxes of Stove Top - which is great - but this is better! It did take longer, but in the end it was worth it.
You will need the following:
1 loaf of crusty french bread, cubed; it was a couple days old and was already pretty dry, but I let it sit in a 200 degree oven for a while to dry out some more
1 batch of cornbread, cubed (For this, I used 1/2 of the Cook's Country recipe); I also let this sit in the oven to dry out
1 stick of butter
2 c. chopped celery
1 onion, chopped
4 c. chicken broth
1/4 c. chopped parsley
1/2 t. dried basil
1/2 t. dried thyme
2 or so t. fresh rosemary, chopped
Melt the stick of butter over medium heat.
Add the celery and onions, and saute for a few minutes, until onions are translucent. It will start to smell really good at this point!
Add 4 c. chicken broth,
bring to a boil,
and add the herbs. Stir it all together (I failed to show this part)!
Mix the bread cubes together in a large bowl (I had to split it up into two batches!),
and spoon the liquid mixture over the cubed bread.
Yum!
Spread it out into a large baking dish. I used the 10 X 15 pyrex dish I have, but you could definitely use the 9 X 13 too.
Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes. I put the broiler on at the end to get the top a little brown.
Enjoy!
For Thanksgiving, my sister Joellen had the idea to make some really cute sugar cookies decorated like turkeys. She got the idea from a really cute cookie blog: Bake at 350.
To start, we followed Paula Deen's recipe for Snowflake Cookies. When the dough was finished, we covered it with plastic wrap and let it chill for about an hour.
We rolled it out, and used a knife to cut around the turkey cutout we printed from the website I can't remember the name of.
We arranged them on top of parchment paper on the cookie sheet, and baked them.
They looked great!
We made royal icing and mixed in the different food color gels!
Icing the cookies was fun! First, we piped the outline of the turkey shape,
and then we filled in the outline by "flooding" the area with slightly thinner icing.
Joellen added the turkey face and they were complete!
They were delicious too!
And then, one day, he was lost.
Kate DiCamillo and Bagram Ibatoulline take us on an extraordinary journey, from the depths of the ocean to the net of a fisherman, from the top of a garbage heap to the fireside of a hoboes' camp, from the bedside of an ailing child to the streets of Memphis. And along the way, we are shown a true miracle — that even a heart of the most breakable kind can learn to love, to lose, and to love again."- The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, edwardtulane.com
Chocolate Chip Cookies... Yum!
Start with these ingredients:
2 1/4 c. flour
1 t. baking soda
1 t. salt
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 c. brown sugar
1 c. (2 sticks) butter, softened.
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla
2 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips
Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl and set aside.
Cream the softened butter and sugars until fluffy and blended together. Add vanilla and eggs. Add flour mixture a little at a time until it is all incorporated.
Fold in cchocolate chips.
Look at the amazing dough you just made!
Scoop into 1-inch balls, and place on an ungreased baking sheet. My baking sheets, Baker's Secret, from Amazon.com, work really well!
Bake for 9-11 minutes at 375 degrees. Mine took 10 minutes.
Enjoy with a glass of milk!
Our event was featured by MIT News! Click the link above to read the full article.
This year's apple bake started out with an amazing theme of, "Peace Love and Apple Bake!"
Lisa and I began the day by venturing out to Costco and Target. We purchased this fun Balloon Time Helium Tank for $20 at Target, and were able to blow up about 50 balloons for our event! It was a much better deal than the $1.50/balloon Shaw's wanted to charge us, and it was easy and fun.
We tied the balloons to our amazing prize mugs, and used them as centerpieces for all of our tables.
Before we knew it, the students were bringing in all sorts of yummy apple dishes!
The MIT press even came to our event, and took some amazing pictures. The pictures below are some they may be featuring in an article about us! When I get the link, I will definitely be sharing :) Many thanks to Stephanie Keeler!
Below is my favorite entry, which was entered into the Apple Art category, and was called "Hook'em Apple!!!"
And this was another fun entry in the "Apple Art" category:
[wpvideo Qe6IpuEp]
At the end of the event, we gave away over $500 in prizes to 26 students!
And in the end, our balloons looked great on the prize table! This year was by far the best Apple Bake ever!
