It’s Snack Time!

Hi all! So for today’s post I thought I might share my favorite snack recipe. The recipe is for hummus 🙂 I am telling you this may very well be the best snack on earth. So here is your recipe, which I developed, *bragging raise the roof hands and eyebrows* hahaha.

1 16oz can of Garbanzo beans (the amount varies between brands so just your average size can)

2 crushed and peeled cloves of garlic

2 Tablespoons of olive oil

4 Tablespoons of Tahini (this can be found just about anywhere nowadays typically near the peanut butter)

The juice of one large lemon

two pinches of salt (more or less depending on your taste)

put all of your ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth, like peanut butter.

And there you have it, a healthy simple snack, serve with toasted pita or as a dip for veggies 🙂 Happy Saturday.

 

“We’ll Always Have Paris”

WARNING! this post contains a lot of pictures! If you have very little patience for people who feel the need to over-document events in their life this post is not for you!

Hello Guys! Sorry I’ve been MIA for a while, but I have a good excuse…I was helping plan my 20th! Ya I guess that may not be a great excuse…but it’s my party and I’ll slack off if I want to. So normally I never do anything terribly over the top for my birthdays, but for my 20th I wanted to do something with a bit of umph, a fun, slightly glamorous, but still laid back-ish in style party. So I decided I would throw a French (Parisian) inspired dinner party, with some of my closest friends. I had such a blast planning, cooking, and spending time with my great friends! I am sort of a foodie so this party was the perfect excuse for me to cook all of the fussy dishes I wouldn’t normally prepare, like French Macaroons, those are some work! But lucky me I have a loving family so I didn’t have to do a lot of the work on my own. So enough talking I am sure you would much prefer to see what my party looked like so here ya go.

We strung up lights and set the table in the living room, so we had plenty of space.

This is the gorgeous flower arrangement my mother put together, might I add she said she has “never done arrangements before”. So even without training or practice my mother puts Martha Stewart to shame!

These are the awesome posters that we found for 60% off!

We decided to even decorate the front door area!

Our adorable little sandwich board. PS mommy wrote this! How cute is her handwriting?

Now for my favorite part…the food! These are the French Macaroons.

The gorgeous red fondant raspberry cake my mommy made me. Isn’t she just the best?

The delicious cheese tray.

Tapenade in endive leaves.

Our entire cocktail menu. Bloody Mary’s, tapenade in endive, cheese tray, and prosciutto wrapped around cantaloupe and asparagus. It was all incredibly delicious.

Quite possibly the most delish dish I have ever made…Boeuf Bourgingon and mashed potatoes. It was so good my mother who really detests beef, loved this meal like crazy!

Tea and coffee break. I of course had tea yummy 🙂

Then onto dessert cake and Shirley Temple’s.

Gifts! My sweet mommy got me real pearls for my 20th! Cute thing was when she gave me my gift I was wearing my fake pearls 🙂

This necklace was given to me by my very best friend (we’ve been inseparable for the past 11 years). This necklace is either from the late 50’s or early 60’s. And I am not ashamed to say when she gave me this I got pretty choked up.

I also got some other fabulous gifts too, I made out like a bandit, I received some lovely perfume (which I am wearing right now) and some great cards and cash (you can never go wrong with cash is all I am saying).

My great friends and lovely family honestly made this one of the most special birthday’s ever! I love you guys.

So I hope you guys enjoyed my post! And if any of you want the recipe to anything feel free to ask. Have a super happy Monday and a great Valentines. Love you!

 

I’m Thankful it’s over!

So Thanksgiving has come and gone, hooray! I’m all for holidays don’t get me wrong, but its seems to be more and more work every year. People’s expectations are outlandish! My eldest brother had the nerve to say I had abandoned my duty of cooking the pecan pie because I only made pumpkin this year! REALLY REALLY? I made the turkey so he can shut up! Haha this of course was just a bit of harmless teasing between siblings, but I’m talking about the rest of the people out there…you know who you are, you people who run over small children with your shopping carts so you can be done shopping first, you people who seem to challenge anyone around you to a shopping cart death match! or even you people who are so stressed you punch out the giant turkey display and scream QUIT TAUNTING ME! I KNOW I’M NOT READY! This too is a slight exaggeration but you get my point, I think everyone needs to take a chill pill and realize that the holiday is about being thankful not about being a perfect cook, stepford wife, or holiday magic maker. So that’s why I’m thankful it’s over (of course I still have to survive the Christmas shoppers aka The Possesed haha). So here are some pictures of our holiday feast, that we girls braved the grocery store the day before Thanksgiving in order to make. Hope you enjoy!

Our gorgeous table that little sister did up!

The yams!

The dressing.

The greenbean casserole that my ungrateful brother made 😉

The Osage hominy relish

Cranberry sauce

Whole cranberry relish

The perfect pumpkin pie 😉

The hideous pie my ungrateful brother made 😉 no his pie was awesome!

And to close this post with my perfect turkey 🙂

Dragon Fruit

So us girls (mom, sister, and myself) were curious to try dragon fruit, while we were doing our grocery shopping we saw that it was a lot cheaper than it normally is (call us frugal but spending close to ten dollars on fruit is downright silly) so with it being waaaay cheaper we bought one and took it home! Let me tell you it may be one of the prettiest fruits I have ever seen and one of the most disappointing tastes I have ever experienced! With something so beautiful you expect an equally beautiful taste, well it tasted something like a mix of parsnip, radish, and kiwi. I mean it’s not the worst thing I have ever had (hijiki is the worst! boy now that was gross) but I was really disappointed. But its pretty so here ya go!

More food!

The other day I made some baked tilapia (garlic, lemon, and parsley), sautéed asparagus, and brown rice. I loved it and would like to share some pictures. I don’t know what it is about food I just love the way it photographs! hope you enjoy.