hungry.

I've been trying out a lot of recipes found on the ever handy pinterest. And man have they been tasty! Although the peaches & creme (or half&half as it were) were completely impromptue, they were definitely pin worthy.

In addition I decided to try out three different recipes for a Sunday dinner party with our friends Ariel, Mike, & Atlas. *A frozen, fresh lemonade, spinach lasagna rolls, & a cucumber salad. And even though our apartment is probably equivalent in size to the cupboard under the stairs that Harry Potter grew up in, our yard did prove to be more than appropriate for hosting said dinner party.

All of the recipes turned out to be delicious, and will be put on repeat soon enough. You can find them here.

My most recent trial was just pulled from the oven. No doubt with the history of quality pins, this one will be just as satisfying.

Happy fooding.
Air.

Julie & Me

I made Andrew a proud and happy man last night. I decided to cook a full blown meal for the two of us. Now, ever since we've been back I've been much better at making my man his meals. In fact, I've averaged 2 a week for the last couple of weeks, which is HUGE for me. HUGE. So anyway, after seeing Julie & Julia last week (HIGHLY recommend, but plan on leaving starved after).. I was CRAVING Bruschetta (pronounced: Brusketta, I know, I've been saying it wrong all along too until lately). There was a scene where Julie made some for her and her husband, and it looked so good, I was literally salivating intensely. So, this week I made the priority to try it out.. and yesterday accomplished it with flying colors! Here is where I found the recipe, but below I've altered it a little to our taste. "Bon Appetit!"
(Trust me, it's good. I don't even like tomatoes usually, that's how good it is!)

Ingredients:

• 6 or 7 ripe plum tomatoes (about 1 1/2 lbs)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced (I just added a smidgen of pre-minced garlic, instead)
  
• 1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 6-8 fresh basil leaves, chopped (I actually did about 3 teaspoon squirts from a tube)
  
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

• 1 baguette French bread or similar Italian bread
• 1/4 cup olive oil

Preparation:

1 Prepare the tomatoes first. Parboil the tomatoes for one minute in boiling water that has just been removed from the burner. Drain. Using a sharp small knife, remove the skins of the tomatoes. (If the tomatoes are too hot, you can protect your finger tips by rubbing them with an ice cube between tomatoes.) Once the tomatoes are peeled, cut them in halves or quarters and remove the seeds and juice from their centers. Also cut out and discard the stem area. Why use plum tomatoes instead of regular tomatoes? The skins are much thicker and there are fewer seeds and less juice.

2 Make sure there is a top rack in place in your oven. Turn on the oven to 450°F to preheat.

3 While the oven is heating, chop up the tomatoes finely. Put tomatoes, garlic, 1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil in a bowl and mix. Add the chopped basil. Add salt and pepper to taste.

4 Slice the baguette on a diagonal about 1/2 inch thick slices. Coat one side of each slice with olive oil using a pastry brush. Place on a cooking sheet, olive oil side down. You will want to toast them in the top rack in your oven, so you may need to do these in batches depending on the size of your oven. Once the oven has reached 450°F, place a tray of bread slices in the oven on the top rack. Toast for 5-6 minutes, until the bread just begins to turn golden brown.

5 Align the bread on a serving platter, olive oil side up. Either place the tomato topping in a bowl separately with a spoon for people to serve themselves over the bread, or place some topping on each slice of bread and serve. If you top each slice with the tomatoes, do it right before serving or the bread may get soggy.

Makes 24 small slices. Serves 6-10 as an appetizer. Or 3-4 for lunch (delicious served with cottage cheese on the side.)

Or if you're us, make it as a side dish, and save the leftovers! They've been good to have the next day! Oh my heaven. It was splendid! PS. They were actually so good and filling, the spaghetti wasn't even necessary.

Best of luck. Pealing tomatoes is actually quite easy, and WELL WORTH IT! Seriously, you should make these. (:

Cheers!

Sunny Anderson,

If I had KNOWN you'd be stopping by, my post would have looked a lot more like this....

OH MY GOODNESS, IS THIS WOMAN HEAVEN SENT!?

I think so.

I mean, her show is divine.. Cooking for Real just so happens to be where I got my love and lust for a glass door refrigerator! (true story, see this post) Not to mention, her creations usually make my mouth water, and make me feel as if I could make that insane dish from scratch.
Now if only my husband wasn't practically vegan, we'd be trying out a lot more of what she has to offer.

I love your stuff, Sunny. And if you want to come cook for us, we'd be ok with that. No, better yet.. I have a little sister (named Alex) who would KILL to have you bake with her. Her dream is to become a pastry chef, and she's already well on her way. If you had her in your kitchen, I think I'd be inducted into the hall of BEST SISTERS EVER. (:

Alright, so I can't tease you guys and not give you some of her goodness.. so here's one I plan to try out someday soon.

French Toast with Caramelized Pecans, Strawberries and Cream

Aka.. New Orleans style french toast. Yes, I have a thing for breakfast foods.

{recipe here, episode here}

We love you, Sunny. Hopefully you'll visit regularly. (:

PB&J Pancakes

I'm practically starving right now, and I stumbled upon THIS shot of Sunny Anderson's goodness.. and practically pass out.
Yeah, and I don't even like pancakes. In fact, I hate them.. but these look so heaven sent!

Oh gosh, I need to go get some food.

{Recipe HERE}

Cheesecake Factory

..mashed potatoes.

MMMmmmMmmm..

Yeah, they're SO yummy that I found the recipe here and plan on making them for Thanksgiving. Since Drew & I will be up here in Utah, rather than traveling home.. we plan to make our own Thanksgiving meal for the first time EVER. :)
..and since we have redskin potatoes lying around, I figure what better use to get out of them than THESE!

So here's the makings of these 'to die for' taters in case you're interested!

Ingredients:
- 4 cups cubed redskin potatoes
- 2 heaping Tbsp. horseradish
- 1/2 cup butter (softened)
- 1 teaspoon salt and to taste
- 1 cup shredded Gouda cheese

Boil potatoes until very soft and drain off water. Add butter, salt and whip with a rotary beater until butter melts. Whip in remaining ingredients. Adjust seasoning.

..and Vuah-la! :)

image from yahoo! food

Enjoy!

Limey Smoothie

This recipe comes from my in-laws. For those of you who don't know, my father in law is a nutritional health doctor and cures people of their ailments.. which include all of the very serious variety. He has around a 90% success rate of curing people who are terminally ill with cancer, diabetes and so on. To learn more you can go to their website at pHmiracleliving.com.

Anyway, I have a hard time eating as healthy and granola as Andrew does (he's on a much looser version of his parents health regimen.) But when his mother Shelley made this for me I absolutely LOVED it! I had a hard time believing what was in it when she told me. So any who, give it a try.. it's the PERFECT ultra ultimate healthy cool summertime snack.

Ingredients
- 1 whole english cucumber
- 1 HUGE handful of spinach
- 1/2 an avocado (large or small)
- 3 peeled limes
- 1 TSP green stevia (or sugar, but stevia's the natural healthy alternative :])

- Plenty of ice

Blend and enjoy! Tell me what you think. You love it or hate it, but all I know is that it's the tastiest healthy snack I've ever had, and it's so simple to make! (PS don't let the photo fool you, it tastes better than it looks, you can tell your kids it's a monster slime smoothie. :])