Official Switch

Hello Everyone! The time has come for the Official Switch! In an effort to create a more streamlined and focused blog I will be moving over to - The Lucky Penny. I'm very excited!

I hope you enjoy. And I pledge to do my best to keep up a consistent blogging schedule! Fingers crossed.

peace, love, new beginnings, and happiness!

Find a penny pick it up, all the day you'll have good luck!

Hello... anybody still out there? Unfortunately this post does not mean a full scale return to blogging... as much as I would like it to. I'm still trying to figure out how to juggle the demands of life with my hobby of blogging. Someday I will figure it out, hopefully.

Just wanted to share something LONG overdue. The cutest thing in the world.

And she is all ours! We fostered this scruffy little (and when I say little I mean 40 pounds of strength and fur) 2 year old wheaten terrier mix for one week and she stole our heart... despite her "attitude" towards other dogs. We adopted her and named her Penny. Love. She's working on the "attitude" with the other dogs. Rescue dogs are full of surprises. But I love that I gave a dog a home.

peace, love, finally my own puppy!, and happiness!

Missing You

Hi my few dedicated-but-becoming-less-dedicated-as-I-never-post-anything blog readers. I miss you. And I miss blogging. I finally had time to sit down and look at my google reader feed and found that I had up to 800 posts that are begging to be read. As I'm slowly reading through my feed I'm once again amazed by the inspiration, vision, class, and creativity that exists in the blog world. My eyes are constantly being opened to new ways to cook, eat, think about food, decorate, make a home, and many other things. I love feeling inspired when I read others blogs and hope to some day inspire people with my blog. The first step to accomplishing that goal is to probably actually blog, and then blog consistently. Keeping up with my posts has always been my biggest problem and when I finally do launch my recipe / food site I promise the blogs will come on a regular basis. For now, all I can offer is a reasonable explanation to my lack of blogging and some iphone picks. Enjoy.

Reasons why I have been a horrible blogger lately:

1. I dropped my camera in water and didn't get a new one until last week. (Thanks Adam!)

2. While unemployed throughout all of March and half of April I busied myself doing other very important things... alright, I'll be honest I have no idea what I busied myself doing... but hey, I had no camera an no money to buy one! (This might be my least reasonable of excuses.)

3. The rest of April and half of May brought a 3 state road trip for work which occupied every waking minute of my time. Lucky for me I got to be around food all day and am now spending my days watching footage of said food. Details on this adventure to come later!

4. I've been working on the new site.

So now for the fun part - some iphone pics of my adventures over the last two months!

{David Eyre's Pancake - now a go-to item in my house for breakfast and dessert}

{Rainbow in Hollywood over the Academy Award's Red Carpet}

{Beautiful Oscar arrangement that I brought home}

{Working with Tabatha Coffey and Maria Sansone}

{Homemade cream cheese stuffed bacon hugged shrimpies}

{Delicious Dinner Party with Sabrina - Tri-Tip with my famous cream and ale mushrooms, kale chips, and mashed sweet potatoes}

{My Amazing New Bike}

{Long Beach beach evenings}

{Long Beach Grand Prix}

{Hiking with Mom in Havasu}

{Sharing Ice Cream filled Cupcakes with Crystal}

{Cuban Anniversary Dinner}

Thanks to everyone still reading! It has been a fun and challenging past few months, but I promise to share more about my adventures.

Check out the beginning of my new blog! Right now I have some of my favorite recipes up from "A Day to Play" - I'm not anticipating that it will be fully ready to go and have posts up everyday until the end of the summer. But I would love any feedback on what is up there now so I can start making tweaks before the "official launch". 

www.fromthefirstbite.com

peace, love, and blogging is happiness.

New Adventures All Around and Stromboli

I've realized to be a somewhat successful blogger consistency is key. Which happens to be my downfall, especially when you accidentally submerge your digital camera in a stream while hiking. Which leaves me in this peculiar predicament of being unemployed (my web series was canceled a few weeks ago but you should still check it out - www.theinvestedlife.msn.com) and having plenty of time to cook new things and no way of documenting it besides my iphone. So out the window goes my new year's resolution of taking better food photos. But despite my inability to photograph anything new, I sat down today and resolved to get the new blog in better shape. I'm still not ready to debut it, but I'm excited about the possibility of it having some consistency in its postings.

For now, I will try to maintain my small readership my giving you some new posts on this site until the other one is ready to go.

In other new adventures - I made something with pepperoni in it. I notoriously hate pepperoni and always have. I won't even eat a slice of pepperoni pizza that has the pepperoni picked off of it because of the horrible pepperoni grease left behind. And my dislike has nothing to do with pepperoni being greasy or bad for you. I love greasy. I just hate the taste. But Adam loves it and probably has been suffering from pepperoni withdrawals, so when I came across a recipe for Stromboli on the blog Liv Life I decided I had to give it a try - if only for Adam - and the possibility of it being great quick and easy party food. I followed the recipe pretty much exactly. It calls for ham, pepperoni, cheese, and bread - a winning combo (except for the pepperoni). The one thing I did differently was instead of using a frozen loaf of bread like the recipe suggests, I used Pillsbury french loaf. I was unsure how it was going to work, but it turns out it is really easy to unroll the Pillsbury french loaf at the seam and laying it flat in order to lay all the ingredients on it. So easy, and that way you don't have to worry about defrosting frozen dough.

It was so easy and came out beautifully. Adam loved it and it would be great party food. 

I even liked it, despite the pepperoni, in fact it was a good way to get me to consider liking pepperoni. But really, do I need to like pepperoni? I like almost everything else that is bad for you, I don't think I need to add another to the list.

I can't wait to try other combos. Next time I think I'm going to do turkey, roasted red peppers, and cheese. Check out the original recipe here.

peace, love, pepperoni?, and happiness!

And wish me luck on the new blog! I'm getting excited!

LOVE

I love Valentine's Day. And not just because I have the love of my life to celebrate it with. I love that there is a whole day dedicated to telling people you love them - and not just your significant other, but your friends and family also. I love the little valentines we handed out in school when we were young, I love taking a day out of our busy lives to dedicate time solely to the idea of love. Yes, you should make your loved ones feel loved every day, but it's nice to have a day to make them feel extra special. So in honor of Valentine's Day, here are photos with red in them - the color of love.

{love}

{strawberry fields}

{pink lady apples}

{seagull}

{peppers}

{tomatoes}

{museum sign}

{stop light}

{red carpet}

peace, LOVE, and happiness!

Have a happy Valentine's Day no matter how or who you spend it with!

Pizza Wars!

Christmas brought me an array of new cooking / baking gadgets and goodies.  One of those fabulous gadgets was Sur La Table's mini pizza grilling set - big thanks to Mom!  I've grilled pizza in the past and found it be delicious and easy, yet somehow simultaneously challenging - so I love the idea of putting the pizza on pizza stones on the grill.   Armed with a pizza stone each, Adam and I challenged each other to a fight to the death (or eat to the death) very serious competition that we dubbed PIZZA WARS!  We wasted no time getting down and dirty.  The first round started with some technical difficulties... heating the stones too high, leaving the crust on for too long, and Adam lifting the metal lid without an oven mitt (I told him they would be hot).  Adam emerged victorious with a pizza smothered in BBQ sauce, covered in smoked gouda cheese and drenched in ranch dressing.

But the second round was were things turned very serious.  With so much on the line (I hate to loose), I turned to Adam's food fav and weakness - breakfast - as my inspiration and way to win him over.  See, we are the only two judges of this very serious competition so I had to turn to what he loves the most to earn his vote.  I cooked up some soychorizo (he'll never know the difference from the real thing), eggs,  green chiles, and even hash browns.  I sauced up my dough with some green salsa and topped it with the hash browns, then piled high the soychorizo and eggs, and finally threw cheese on top from all angles.  This thing was destined to be a winner.

{mozzarella, smoked gouda, and sharp cheddar}

But Adam, that sneaky one, kept his cards hidden.  He proceeded like he was making a normal pizza with normal sauce and normal cheese and then at the last second, he pulled out the big guns - McDonalds McNuggets -  he literally pulled them out of the microwave where he was hiding them from me.

{nuggets}

Yes, I love, love, love McNuggets.  Now before you go getting all judge-y on me let me explain myself. First, they are the ONLY thing that cures my hangovers.  And if you've ever been around me with a hangover you would most likely be force feeding me loose little golden chicken-like nuggets - I am most definitely not a trooper when it comes to hangovers (or most other kinds of illness and aches, minor injuries such as, bruises included).  Second, they taste good and most likely have crack laced into them making them highly addictive, therefore its not my fault. Third, no I don't want to know what's in them - I've seen Fast Food Nation and Food Inc. and I choose to ignore this information when I very occasionally give in to my fast food urges.  So in conclusion, don't judge, and yes, Mickey D's McNuggets are the big guns in Pizza Wars.  Damn Adam and his smart thinking.

{pizzas on the grill}

Our method of cooking pizza-on-a-grill-on-a-stone starts with getting the stone on the grill and letting it heat up.  Once the stone is nice and hot dust it with cornmeal to keep the dough from sticking. Next lay  the dough on the stone and let it cook for about 3-5 minutes until the bottom side is starting to crisp up.  Flip, and then load up the toppings. Our pizza stones came with metal domes to go over the stone and create an oven like atmosphere so that the cheese gets nice and melt-y.  Remember the pizzas will cook fast!  Using oven mitts (ahem, Adam) take the pizza off the stones and prepare your taste buds for a pizza party.

{Adam's pizza off the grill}

{my pizza off the grill}

Add any last minute finishing touches and let the competition judging begin!

{my pizza dotted with sour cream}

{Adam's pizza dotted with ranch}

Both pizza's turned out awesome. We made great improvements in crust area - leaving it on just long enough to get crispy but not black. There was no clear cut winner.  Both of us chose our own pizzas while saying the other's pizza was also very, very good. He almost won me over with those damn McNuggets - I ate all the nuggets off my pizza and even went and grabbed more ranch dressing to dip them into - but my pizza was just too good that I couldn't vote against it. After much pressing I accepted the fact that he wasn't gonna vote against his and we called a tie and gave ourselves a pat on the back for a very successful Pizza War.

Peace, love, pizza, and happiness!

Breakfast Bacon Apple Tart

Weekend breakfasts are our favorite meal. Generally because they involve bacon, eggs sunny side up, bacon, hash browns, and did I mention bacon? It's not every morning you have the time to make hash browns and bacon or go to the local cafe down the street and get a heaping plate of Special Spud - which features both. That's why weekend breakfasts are so magical. Not only do they more frequently than not happen late enough in the day to double up as lunch leaving you with the ability to eat more and feel less guilty, but they only happen on the weekends making them something to look forward to. With all that said, you would think this post would be about some elaborate classic big breakfast. Its not. But it does feature bacon.

I set out menu planning on Friday knowing I would make something for breakfast on Saturday morning while we waited for our DirectTV to be installed. I surveyed the ingredients in our fridge and eyed the apples from my farmer's box delivery.



How could I transform those apples into a breakfast dish worthy of Adam's critical breakfast appetite? Simple - add bacon.



So Saturday morning I whipped together a Breakfast Bacon and Apple Tart. And it did the trick. The flakey crust satisfied my craving for both biscuits and hash browns. The spread of cream cheese was reminiscent of a bagel, the apples of apple pie, and the bacon screamed breakfast.



With only two people to the whole tart it was quite filling.  It was a nice change to our usual weekend breakfast. Adam had his bacon, the apples made it feel healthy - and that made me feel like I was sticking to my new year's resolutions. It was an all around winner.



Bacon and Apple Tart Recipe:

1 pre-made puff pastry sheet, thawed (I use Trader Joe's puff pastry)
2-3 apples, peeled, cored, and sliced (I used 3 medium sized pink lady apples)
4 slices of bacon cooked almost completely
about 2 oz of cream cheese or lite cream cheese
1 to 2 tablespoons real maple syrup

1. Preheat oven to 375
2. Line baking sheet with parchment paper
3. Place puff pastry sheet on baking sheet with parchment paper and spread cream cheese over it.  Leaving a crust with no cream cheese.

4. Layer apples on top of cream cheese.

5. Bake tart (without bacon) in oven for approximately 15 min.  (I didn't really time it, just kinda checked on it)  The pastry should be puffing and turning golden colored.
6. Meanwhile, cook bacon until almost the desired crispiness you like it.  (It will cook a little more in the oven)
7.  About 5 minutes before the tart is done - take out of the oven and crumble bacon on top.  Drizzle with 1 to 2 tablespoons of real maple syrup.  (I like to measure the syrup out and put it in a measuring cup with a spout to get a nice even drizzle.)
8. Continue to cook the tart until apples are soft and pastry is golden.  Approximately 5 more minutes.

9.  Slice and Enjoy!

peace, love, breakfast, and happiness!