Hospital Survival Gift (plus Sea Salt Caramel Corn)

My cousin Stephanie is having her second baby today! Joel should arrive sometime today. Paige, Laura, Stephanie and I grew up together so the girls and I put together this care package for Stephanie's hospital stay.

We included... an outfit and two onesies for Joel; a book, snack and "big sister" badge for Grace; a magazine and chocolates for Stephanie; and homemade sea salt caramel popcorn for Stephanie and her husband Shane.



I made the badge for Grace as well as the caramel popcorn. Get the recipe here. I didn't add the M&Ms this time but I am thinking of doing red & green ones and giving it away with Christmas gifts during the holidays.

Snickerdoodle Cake with Brown Sugar Buttercream

I made this yummy cake for Ann's birthday. Its so good and literally smells just like snickerdoodle cookie. I added some gold sprinkles just for fun :)

I didn't have any good photos so this photo is borrowed from the original author, Always with Butter. (Which has so many recipes that I'm dying to try, anyone else need a birthday cake??)

Macaron Afternoon

Mitzi, Ann and I have been wanting to try macarons for a while now. Lots of bloggers talk about how temperamental they are and how a lot of the time they collapse and aren't very pretty. In P-dub fashion, we did an afternoon of baking at my house. We had a REALLY good day and luck on our side and were able to successfully make 3 kinds of macarons!

We started out with Bravetart's French macaron recipe. Ann and I stuck with vanilla and Mitzi added 25 grams of cocoa to hers to make them chocolate. I filled mine with blackberry buttercream while Ann filled hers with pistachio buttercream and finally Mitzi filled her chocolate ones with marshmallow frosting (for hot chocolate macarons).

Gifting Cinnamon Rolls

I made cinnamon rolls from P-dub for a gift for new parents Trent and Amy. Mike and I also did their newborn shoot... Riley's a doll! Hopefully they enjoyed their cinnamon rolls. (Mike and I certainly enjoyed the ones we held back for ourselves haha!)








I'm not entirely sure how many cinnamon rolls her recipe is supposed to make... it says 8 servings but I was worried this meant 8 pans so I cut the recipe in half. I got two trays of 8 cinnamon rolls each. I also omitted the coffee from the icing recipe for my first shot. Definitely going to make these again and freeze for holiday guests!

Whole Wheat Biscuts, Homemade Butter & Crafting

I went over to Ann's recently for a little afternoon crafting to make Grace a Minnie Mouse headband to give her on my trip home. Here's both the headband, the headband-maker Ann and my "contribution" to crafting - whole wheat biscuits with homemade butter.





The whole wheat biscuit recipe can be found here. A nice departure from regular biscuits, lots of texture and not at all dry like some wheat things can be. And, here's the link for the homemade butter recipe. Super easy! The pictures are really instrumental in knowing you didn't screw it up (which is what I thought happened once the cream turned into whipped cream).

Mike took photos of Grace, Stephanie, Shane and to-be Baby Joel while we were at home over the weekend. He'll post photos at his blog soon... hopefully he was able to snap one of Grace in her new headband!

Houston Weekend

Mike and I took off to Houston last weekend to visit my bestie, shoot some photos, attend a wedding and visit with our wedding photographer turned friend Julie (oh and eat and sleep too). I'm sure you can guess that we planned 100 things into our short weekend... not even realizing we were coming into town during a golf tournament and the men's final four! Not to be discouraged, we edited our plans and got down to business...

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(1) & (2) guava margaritas and brisket tacos thanks to el tiempo (3) & (4) a stop at laura's very local bar, rose's garden where we dropped in on an april fool's fake wedding reception and were offered sausage (that's what she said) and politically incorrect wedding cake then spotted this iguana (a real one that has been stuffed, ick) (5) lunch in cancun via juan mon's international sandwiches (such a cool idea, maybe nibbe could pull it off?) (6) & (7) antique shopping and gawking off taft (8) wiener dog (9) pulled pork taquito brunch at cedar creek (10) photoshoots


just a note... the hubs and i celebrated 6 months of married life yesterday!

Birthday!

Today is my birthday! Mike and I had a great dinner with our friends at the Ranch over the weekend and came back to our house for strawberry cake with funfetti icing (made by Ann!). We had such a great time! Thanks everyone for joining us and for the great gifts!

Date Night - Sushi Axiom

Tried a new restaurant thanks to living social! I love that and groupons. They are so handy!

We had a date night with the Combe's and went to Sushi Axiom. We had great sushi, drinks and who wouldn't love a free sake bomb from the manager?

cherry blossom roll

I tried to take a picture of the octopus Mike & Nick ate but it came out all blurry... not my cup of tea at all. However, the rolls and crawfish fried rice were great! We'll definitely go back for more!

To top the night off, after waiting in the frigid first weekend of March air, a total stranger jumped in Mike's back seat thinking it was her friends car. It starts to dawn on her that its the wrong car only after just about buckling her seatbelt and repeating how cold she was outside. So funny!

Housewarming & Crawfish Cornbread

We had some friends over this weekend so we could show off our house and eat some cajun food before Mardi Gras!

I made chicken & sausage gumbo and crawfish cornbread. I also brought back crawfish boudain and spicy pork boudain from my trip to Orange last weekend. Mike and I picked up Hurricanes & King Cake for the party as well. Friends brought lots of good stuff - pork tenderloin, jalapeno cheese grits, boudain dip, stuffed jalapenos, and some much needed salad after all the rich food!

Here's the recipe for Crawfish Cornbread - something you'll often find served at my grandparents house!

ingredients
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp Tony’s seasoning
1 tsp salt
1/2 stick butter, softened
2 cups cheddar cheese, grated
3 eggs, slightly beaten
½ cup onion, chopped
½ cup bell pepper, chopped
½ cup green onion, chopped
3 jalapenos, seeded and chopped
1 15 ounce can of cream style corn
1 pound crawfish tails, chopped
1 8½ ounce box Jiffy Cornbread mix

directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 9 x 12 pan with Pam. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and stir until combined. Pour mixture into pan and bake for 45 to 55 minutes or until golden brown on top and cooked through.

note
The ingredients listed on the Jiffy box are not needed as part of the recipe. The cornbread is very moist so it might look undercooked but if a toothpick comes out clean and the top is golden, its ready to eat.

Here are a couple of pics thrown through the "Shake It Photo" app:

crawfish cornbread

jalapeno cheese grits

flip cup

My Bestie Cooks!

My bestie Laura sent me this photo last night depicting her recent kitchen adventure:

I expect these for breakfast next time I visit... which needs to be asap!

Weekend Waffles

This weekend Mike and I had dinner with newlyweds Nick & Erica and another long-time friend of Mike's, Adam. Both guys were groomsmen in the wedding.

We had a delish dinner at The Ranch in Las Colinas which is by far one of my favorite places to eat. I love to get the Dublin Dr. Pepper & Crown to sip on all night long. We also discovered Saturday nights are half-price bottles of wine so we had a great Chardonnay courtesy of Adam.

The menu is FULL of local ingredients and the menu even tells you where the ingredients come from.... I love that!

Highlight of dinner was a new item on the menu - chicken & waffles! These little stacks came with whipped sweet potatoes on the bottom topped by a piece of waffle with ancho maple glaze topped by a piece of boneless fried chicken with creamy jalapeno gravy. To die for!

The photo isn't fantastic because its a little dark in there and it was on my blackberry. You can also see the kobe tacos we ordered :)


I'm going to have to experiment with making my own chicken & waffles very soon!

8th Dish of Christmas 2010 - Oatmeal Cranberry Chocolate Chip Cookies

As I was watching Saturday's Giada episode, it dawned on me that I had all the ingredients in the kitchen to make these cookies and that they would be great bagged up for the girl's as a small Christmas gift. So with two hours before the fondue party, I printed out the recipe and got to work!

Here's a trick - I had been running the oven to make my other goodies that day so to quickly soften the butter, I sliced it and put it on a dish in the oven and shut the door. The residual heat softened it really quickly!













I packaged them in a simple brown paper bag and off Mike and I went to the fondue party!

Cooking for a Guest!

My bestie came in town for our first ever guest stay at the new house. (Too bad the guest room wasn't finished!) We did some shopping, watched the Aggies get a win over Nebraska and had lots of yummy food!

Friday night I made these maple-oatmeal scones from Ina Garten. YUM! My recipe made way more than her estimated number of 14 scones so beware, and maybe cut in half if you only want a few. I had enough for Laura, Mike, myself, a goodie bag for Ann and her roommate as well as her sister Virginia. I even brought extras to work on Monday! I really enjoyed munching on these throughout the weekend and they were a cinch to make.

new mixer courtesy of some super nice co-workers!

Mike and I cleaned and got the house as presentable as we could, stuffing half-emptied boxes in closets and freshening the guest bath with some white hydrangeas. We've got a lot more work ahead of us (I'm referring to it as botox for the house as opposed to actual plastic surgery haha) but my parents, sister and boyfriend are visiting this week for Thanksgiving so I think we'll have plenty of helping hands to fix up the minor things and help with painting.

Saturday we had a yummy lunch (with cakeballs) at a local deli/bakery called Outta the Oven. We headed to meet Ann, her roommate Alicia and sister Virginia at the Etsy market. We were a bit disappointed... it was really crowded and hot! Hoping for a better selection in the spring. That night we went to Danny and Mitzi's to hang out with other Aggies and watch the game.

Sunday, Laura and I went on a mission to find cute boots. Super successful! She also helped me pick out a couple of things for the house.

We ended the weekend with a dinner of all Giada recipes - Turkey Milanese (made with chicken instead), potatoes with pancetta and an arugula and tomato salad with lemon and olive oil.

are we oinkers or what?

What a great weekend!