Browned Butter

I just ate the unhealthiest dinner ever. But it was sooo good! Jake is my master chef and he knows how much I like the brown butter & mizithra cheese pasta from the Spaghetti Factory so he decided to make it for me... with a twist by adding bacon. Mmmm!! Have you ever had browned butter? It it WAY better than just regular, melted butter, with extra flavors and almost a sweet nuttiness to it. If you've never had it you have to try it. It's completely unheathy so have it in small doses. But here is a recipe taken from this page:

Cut up a pound of unsalted butter into small pieces, and put into a large, cold saucepan. Turn the burner to medium, and let the butter melt, swirling or stirring it occasionally. One pound of brown butter should take about 15-20 minutes to reach the right point. The butter will start to foam, and the milk solids will sink to the bottom before they turn brown, so keep an eye on it and stir frequently, so that it doesn't burn.

It's done when the mixture begins to turn golden and a release a nutty aroma. At this point, it will turn from golden to black very quickly (and black means bitter), so you'll want to transfer it immediately to your clean, shallow bowl, as it will keep cooking in the pan even after you take it off the heat. Let the butter cool down, then cover well and refrigerate. Brown butter loses about 25 percent of water weight as it cooks, so you'll be left with 75 percent of what you started with. Plan accordingly when measuring for recipes.

When ready to use, you'll need to let the butter soften slightly, but a small ice cream scoop works well to remove it from the bowl.

It's actually pretty easy, and if you make a lot and save it like the recipe suggests, just substitute it for normal baking, cooking, spreading on toast, etc. (Although making smaller quantities at a time helps you to not overindulge). :) If you try it, let me know what you think!

Afternoon Tea

There is something that is so relaxing about drinking tea. Aside from the fact that it tastes good, it also seems to have a calming effect. At least on me, anyway. :) And so I have recently decided to start collecting tea cups. You know, the old fashioned kind that come with a saucer? I want a bunch of them, but all different. My husband's Granny did that and when she passed away last year we inherited two of them - the start to my collection. At that time, however, I wasn't interested in starting a collection of my own.

But just recently I was having tea with a friend at a darling little tea shop nearby (I was SO excited when this place went in) and she and I were talking about how neat it was that all of their china tea cups were different, but each one unique and pretty. So we both decided that we'd love to start a collection of our own. And what's more, rather than just having them sit endlessly in a china cabinet, we actually plan to use them!

So I found this beautiful set by Spode. I bought this blue set for my friend and the black version for myself.
Isn't it pretty? The company is in England and have been in business for over 200 years - how amazing is that?! At any rate, I have been using my teacup almost every day for the past week. There's something about it that just feels so elegant and sophisticated. It goes great with my new pearls! ;)

Pretty Pumpkin Cake

So I saw this neat pumpkin cake on TV and thought I'd try it out. You have to have a bundt pan to make it. I used a spice cake mix and made two cakes... once they were cool I inverted one and put it on the cake plate. I prefer homemade frosting so I made cream cheese frosting and used food coloring to turn it orange.
Then I put the other cake on top so it started to take on the shape of a pumpkin.

Then frosted the rest! I had set aside some of the frosting so I could color it green and used that to frost an ice cream cone, which I inverted and stuck in the hole in the center for a stem and... voila! You have a pumpkin cake!

Cute, huh? I think next time I'll shave down some of the middle to make the two cakes a little more seamless, but overall I think it came out pretty well!

It was pretty tasty, too. :)

Chocolate and Cabernet

One of the things Jake and I love doing together is wine tasting. We are lucky enough that we live within an hour of about 30 wineries so if we want to go wine tasting it is only too easy. Quite a few of them are about 30 minutes away and the closest one to our house is a mere 15 minutes, so we decided to hit that one up this afternoon.

The wine was great, as usual, and sometimes they have snacks or appetizers for their guests. Today it was an enormous chocolate fountain with various treats to dip in it. Yum! The strawberries were delectable! I couldn't stop eating them, and combined with my wine, mmm, what a delicious way to spend an afternoon.

And of course I brought my camera with me so I could traipse into the rows of the vineyards. The leaves were the most stunning shades of red and gold. Especially red... wow was that red vibrant! I haven't had a chance to look at my pictures yet but I can't wait to see them. The fall colors are just gorgeous right now. Another lovely day!

Fall-flavored Coffee

I don't drink coffee every day so when I do I consider it a treat. And if you haven't already noticed, I LOVE the scents and flavors of fall, including what you can add to your coffee. It's still pretty warm where I live (mid-80's) so it hasn't seemed right to have my pumkin spice latte from Starbuck's just yet, but last Tuesday I was on my way to a meeting and my friend/co-worker's car got a flat tire. When she called in to say we'd be late another friend of ours offered to buy us coffee so it would be waiting for us upon arrival. How sweet! Even though it was still a relatively warm morning, I immediately said "Pumpkin Spice Latte!". Bless her heart, I haven't been to Peet's Coffee much so I'm not familiar with their specialties, but that is where she went and I'm guessing "pumkin spice" isn't one of their fall favorites because the latte I got didn't taste anything like it (no offense to the Peet's lovers!). Boo, I was disappointed.




But today at the grocery store I saw some of Coffee-Mate's new fall flavored creamers... and pumpkin spice was one of them! One of those tastily decorated bottles went straight into my cart. The moment I got home I made some coffee to try it out... and it was great! Yay, I can make my own latte's right at home! An inexpensive but satisfying discovery. :) And with other flavors like Gingerbread and Peppermint Mocha I might have to try a few others! (Although for the peppermint flavor I think I'd rather add some peppermint schnapps to hot chocolate). ;)

Eyes WAY Bigger Than Stomach

My husband's grandma is one of the sweestest ladies I know. She really wanted to take us out to lunch today so J and I met her at one of her all-time favorite restaurants - Sizzler. I had not been to a Sizzler in eons so when we walked in and placed our order at the register I asked for a steak with mashed potatoes (and gravy, of course!) and the salad bar, on the side. Sounds like a decent order, right?

As soon as we get our table and plates I make my way over to the salad bar and my eyes instantly become as big and round as silver dollars. There is a taco bar. And pasta. And baked potatoes. And fruit, and salad stuff, and tapioca pudding! My plate is quickly filled with tacos, onion rings and I'm not even sure what else. After finishing that I go back with a fresh plate only to fill it with a complete green salad, seafood salad, macaroni salad, oh, and of course, the tapioca pudding. After finishing that off I suddenly remember that I still have a large steak with potatoes coming. Uh oh... what was I thinking? Then, joy of joys! my oreo milkshake arrives! And soon after comes the steak.

All three bites I managed to eat of it were delicious. Pause... take a deep breath... lean back..... nope. Still can't do any more. A to-go container for my steak, potatoes, oh yeah, and one for my yummy shake, were definitely in order. Yep, my eyes were WAY bigger than my stomach. But hey, six hours later that steak made a pretty delicious dinner!

Halloween Goodies

Some creative, eerie treats from Miss Martha Stewart!

No-Bake Spiderweb Cheesecake

Wicked Witch Cupcakes

Midnight Moon Cookies

Brain Cupcakes

Chocolate Bacon

Yes, you read that right - Chocolate Bacon. Or actually, "Chocolate Covered Bacon with Almonds" is the full name. An unusual combination that actually tastes shockingly good. Kind of makes sense when you think about it, though... a little sweet, a little salty... yeah, it works!

My husband saw this done on an episode of Dinner: Impossible on the Food Network and decided to give it a try. Here is the recipe if you'd like to give it a go:

Ingredients
1 pound thickly sliced slab bacon
1/2 pound milk chocolate
1/4 pound toasted almonds
Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Place bacon on a sheet tray and cook until crisp, about 25 minutes. Melt chocolate in double boiler over low heat. Dip crisp bacon in chocolate and place back on sheet tray.
Sprinkle with almonds and refrigerate for 30 minutes or until ready to serve.

Lobster & Caviar

Last night I had the Travel Channel on the TV as background noise while I was working on something else and a show was on called Pizza Paradises. I wasn't really paying attention until something made me stop and turn my head. A pizza that cost $1000. Wait, whaaaat???? One thousand dollars for a pizza? True, it looked mighty tasty piled with expensive cheeses, lobster and caviar, but, um.... if I'm going to pay $1000 for a pizza it had better come with some diamond jewelry. That's all I'm saying. :P

Mint Chocolate Cookie

I had an amazing cookie today. It was a mint chip chocolate cookie. Basically a chocolate cookie with mint chips instead of white chocolate chips. Sooo good! It tasted like the Andes version of a cookie. I couldn't find a recipe online that was exactly like what I ate so here is the closest one and I just changed the white chocolate chips to mint chips. (Oh, and in the picture above, just try to envision those as being GREEN). :) Here goes:

INGREDIENTS
1 cup butter, softened
2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 2/3 cups mint chips

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt; stir into the creamed mixture. Fold in the mint chips. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, until cookies are set. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.