Search Results for: Free PDF 2024 Efficient Oracle 1z0-1074-23: Oracle Cost Management Cloud 2023 Implementation Essentials Unlimited Exam Practice 🔅 Immediately open [ www.pdfvce.com ] and search for ⇛ 1z0-1074-23 ⇚ to obtain a free download ☎1z0-1074-23 Test Questions

Roasted Red Pepper Pasta

, , 1 Comment

Roasted Red Pepper Pasta

There aren’t enough sauces, ingredients, shapes, cheeses, or styles in the world to burn out my love for pasta. If anything, it seems my taste for the stuff has only expanded since I started this blog; my childhood pasta preferences were limited exclusively to spaghetti with butter and parmesan cheese, and now I favor short, thick pasta dressed in zesty, flavorful sauces. There’s really nothing like writing a food blog to force me into trying new things. And as much as I want to make some of my favorites over and over again, then I’d have nothing new to tell you about! (However, if you haven’t already tried the Penne alla Vodka, you should really make it your top priority.)

Well, maybe your second priority. Because I’m pretty darn happy with this one, too.

All the bits and pieces

Roasted red peppers are pretty easy to come by at the grocery store. Yes, I know that fresh red bell peppers are EVERYWHERE at this time of year (at least in North Carolina), but for a quick and filling weeknight dinner, I went with these. Plus I already had them in my pantry and it was time to use them up.

(more…)

New Years Pensive, 2013 Edition

4 Comments

The sun sets

The New Year always offers such a nice, fresh start. A blank slate. New calendars, a few months with no plane tickets to buy, no approaching major holidays (or holiday parties). But I don’t exactly believe in New Years Resolutions. You can probably guess why. I don’t think I’ve ever made one that really worked. Often, my goals and resolutions are tied heavily to a season, a school year, a semester, or a show. But at this point in the year, I do like setting a few little goals for myself. Some specific, some general, some philosophical, some pragmatic.

At the risk of over-sharing, here’s a list of some little wants, needs, goals, and plans I have for the coming year.

  1. Cultivate a garden worthy of hobbits.
  2. Go outside every day (commuting and errands don’t count, no cheating).
  3. Explore salads.
  4. Don’t let the groundhog scarf up all the baby plants in the garden this year.
  5. Don’t freak out if the groundhog scarfs up all the baby plants in the garden this year.
  6. Join a CSA.
  7. Floss, dang it.
  8. Complete my watch-all-the-Disney-animated-features-in-chronological-order-of-release project (next up: Lady and the Tramp.)
  9. Learn to cook Swiss chard. Also, eggplant.
  10. Get. A. Passport.
  11. Give generously.
  12. Drive the Blue Ridge Parkway in October or BUST!
  13. Throw a Harry Potter theme party.
  14. Visit my sister.
  15. Write more.
  16. Read more.
  17. Laugh till I turn a little purple more.
  18. Call my grandmas more.
  19. Send fifty surprise letters.
  20. Don’t wish away any months, weeks, days, or hours. Each is rare if not unique.

That’s probably not all. But it feels like a start. Some things to look forward to.

What’s on your mind for 2013?

In the Tulips

Charred Corn Salsa

, , , , , , , 1 Comment

Charred Corn Salsa
It felt like spring the latter half of this week. The sun was shining, the last of the snow that has persisted in our street for weeks has melted, and it was nice enough to wander about without a jacket. The thrill of the weather finally breaking is one of my favorite moments each season!

Ingredients
Perhaps associated with the first burst of warm-ish weather, I tend to also get an itch to vacation at this time of year. It might also be years of Spring Break indoctrination, but I suddenly yearn to pack my bags for some tropical adventure! Not that I actually did a lot of that growing up, but the once or twice that we did vacation somewhere warm over Spring Break were enough to permanently spark anticipation every February. Unfortunately, we have no imminent vacation plans for this spring. So! To ease my wanderlust, I’ve settled by making some charred corn salsa.

(more…)

Money Where Your Mouth Is: The Fall and The Year

2 Comments

Im-not-totally-crazy

On January 1st of last year, I began meticulously tracking my food purchases, both for groceries and for dining out, to see how much of my money was going toward locally-produced & sustainably-grown food. It was a daunting task. I logged every receipt, made notes of my cash use at farmers markets and on nights out, and even calculated the market value of the produce grown in my garden plots. Though I originally planned a monthly post documenting my progress, life did what it does and I ended up grouping together the months in roughly seasonal quarters. Now, having tracked for a year, I wanted to take a look back at my spending to see how I did.

But first: a brief moment to discuss my September-December expenses (since, you know, that just ended).

(more…)

Cranberry Maple Granola

, , , , 6 Comments

Hi.

I’m finally clearing out the dust bunnies and cobwebs from my little food blog, which has been somewhat abandoned on a shelf for a while while my job has been the focus of my creative energy. The last six months have been exhilarating, exhausting, and exciting, but as a result, I’ve felt culinarily dead inside. I’ve been in triage mode: cooking only the fastest and easiest recipes in my arsenal (that is, when I cooked at all) and focusing on meals that made lots of leftovers so I only needed to cook every few days. Finally though, the muse is slowly re-awakening. I am interested once more in trying out new recipes, and more importantly, taking twice as long to make them so I can take pictures of the process to share with you.

But I’m not jumping back into the deep end, exactly. What I needed was some granola, and when I felt pretty meh about the options available in the cereal aisle, I grabbed a canister of oats ran for it, deciding I’d figure something out when I got home. And thanks to my sister’s excellent Christmas present, I found the answer pretty quickly: a ridiculously easy granola recipe with only three ingredients. I decided to add a fourth, but only because I had some cranberries in the pantry.

I’ve made granola before, and I’ll be honest, there are a few reasons I don’t make it very often. First, I go through phases with yogurt, so it’s not something that strikes my fancy very often. Second, it’s kind of a hassle to round up all the ingredients. So this recipe, with only oats, salt, and maple syrup, sounded too good to be true. BUT IT ISN’T.

(more…)

Rhubarb Marlow

, , , , , 4 Comments

Though the last few months have been a meteorological roller coaster here in Colorado, the temperatures that now soar up near or above 90 every day indicate that summer has finally arrived in full. The air conditioner in our apartment can hardly keep up with the summer sun, blazing through our western-facing windows on its long descent toward the mountains. Fortunately, our freezer faces no such challenge and can house within it a treasure trove of icy treats perfect for combating the summer heat. And what better way to welcome the arrival of the season than with a dessert that features one of its most celebrated fruits?

Ahhh, rhubarb. Such pretty stalks. Such poisonous leaves. (Seriously, don’t eat the leaves.) And such a short growing season that it’s best to indulge heavily when it finally appears. I can hardly prevent myself from making into my favorite Rhubarb Crisp, but in an effort to broaden my horizons, I dug into a very, very vintage cookbook to find some new ideas. To my delight, I discovered marlow, a dessert that is now so out of the common psyche that when I poked around to learn more, I couldn’t even find it on Wikipedia.

From what I’ve pieced together, marlow is a marshmallow-based dessert that can either be frozen to mimic ice cream or chilled to mimic mousse. It can feature a variety of flavors as the marshmallow, sugar, and heavy cream act as a clean canvas onto which you can paint rhubarb, cherries, chocolate, butterscotch, or anything else you want to eat for dessert. After the fruit (in this case) is cooked down with sugar, the marshmallows and whipped cream are mixed in to create a frothy, fluffy mixture ready for freezing.

(more…)

Sierra’s Turkey Salad

, , , , , 8 Comments

Let’s take a minute to talk about real life.

Some days, there is time to make fresh pasta. Fancy desserts. Elaborate multi-course meals.

Most days though, it’s all I can do to get out the door in the morning toting a breakfast and lunch, and on show days, dinner, so that I can avoid the oh-so-tempting bounties of college food available at work. Especially in January, when fresh food is somewhat difficult to come by and most of my cravings are for something warm and filling.

But I’ve found an answer. An answer to the winter blues, the I-don’t-feel-like-cooking doldrums, and the whoa-we-have-so-much-leftover-turkey-from-the-holidays reality in my freezer.

Sierra’s turkey salad.

I know I’m probably way late catching this train. I’ve never really been a fan of chicken salads and won’t come within ten feet of tuna salads, so I suppose I thought turkey salad would be equally unpleasant. I. Was. Wrong.

(more…)

Almond Chicken

, , , , , 6 Comments

Pan of dinner
Frequently, when I go to my parents’ house, the organizing spirit seizes me with an iron grip and won’t be satisfied until I’ve emptied out the pantry, sorted every package and box and can of food, and replaced them again. It’s usually a comical affair as my mom and I chuckle at the ridiculous artifacts of gift baskets and deep discounts we find lurking at the back of the cupboard. And upon returning home, I tend to find myself inspired to root through my own pantry to create meals with odds and ends I already have on hand.

Almond Chicken

This dish came out of one such rooting. An excess of white rice, leftover almonds from my holiday toffee-making, a can of water chestnuts, and chicken and peas from the freezer, seemingly disparate parts, became something great together as this Almond Chicken. With the addition of a green onion and a bit of sherry and soy sauce, it’s a quick meal that requires only a few minutes of stir-frying and a fluffy bed of rice.

(more…)

Parmesan Asparagus Spears

, , , , 0 Comments

Asparagus Parmesan Spears
After such a long and unpleasant winter, I’ve been really, really savoring the return of warm weather. The twiggy trees outside our apartment are now lush with foliage, the sun is up when we awake and its light lingers in the sky long after we’ve arrived home from work, and laundry goes so much faster since sweaters and jeans have been replaced by tank tops and light, swishy skirts. ‘Tis the season of sunglasses and short haircuts and flip flops and farmer tans (the only kind of tan I get, thank you).

But above all else, ’tis the season of local produce, each week appearing in more abundance and variety at farmers markets around the city. And though leafy greens tend to be the very first fresh items available, the truest harbinger of the coming summer bounty is the mighty asparagus spear.

Springtime spears
These tender shoots are the rock stars on the local produce stage, producing a short-lived but iconic album every year to their adoring fans. For a brief moment, there is a glut of asparagus, piled high on market tables for eager customers to sort through, seeking the perfect stems. And then, just as suddenly, the harvest is over. This year, during these short lovely weeks of asparagus, I stumbled across this simple recipe that has quickly become my favorite.

(more…)

To Bake a Wedding Cake, Part VI: The Big Reveal

15 Comments

Previously:
Part I: A Prologue
Part II: Um, So, What Are We Doing?
Part III: To Do
Part IV: Testing 1, 2, 3
Part V: The Home Stretch

Welcome to the last of my six-part series about the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of baking a wedding cake. Last Tuesday, I flew to Colorado to attend a hen party, participate in the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, stand up as a bridesmaid, and last but not least, to bake a groom’s cake and a wedding cake for Sierra, my best friend of 15 years, and her fiancé husband, Sean.

It was quite a whirlwind trip.

This was also the first time I’ve made a trip to Colorado since leaving for college eight years ago that coincided with luscious autumn colors glazing the mountains and meadows of home. The scene was nothing short of breathtaking.

But you’re probably not here for my photos of leaf-peeping and coasting down Hesperus Hill. I’ll wager you wanna see some dang cake!

(more…)

«< 17 18 19 20 21 >»