Mmm delicious though.
Yep, we're expecting! Due at the end of February - pretty excited!!!
The weekend before Thanksgiving Meg and I went over to Matt's grandma's house (Momma) to learn how to make pie crust and pies, in general. I know I could have just googled it, but she's been making pies for a long time and it was a nice afternoon to spend together. 32 apples. I still have some in the freezer to use. Pie recipe (crust is on another page I think) Momma mixed the dough while we peeled a sliced apples. That's a lot of McIntosh apple slices! Rolling out the dough as thin as possible Getting thin dough into the pie plate without tearing is a two-person job! Cutting off the extra edges I'm sorry do you think pies are healthy? Crisco/lard/butter crust, sugar and more butter on top? Mmm delicious though. Cinnamon and drops of butter cover the sugar before the top crust gets done. Meg is creasing the edges to make it all pretty The finished (uncooked) product! Pie # 2 is underway (we were pros by then) Decided to try a basket weave top this time. Baking is messy. First pie (right) cooked, second pie ready to go (though I cooked it at home later in the week - left it frozen in my fridge until Thanksgiving, along with 2 other apple pies). We also did pumpkin with ready-made crust. And pumpkin tarts - so cute! And even more adorable with some whipped cream on top (at Thanksgiving dinner). Oh yeah and I "outed" myself by posting this picture on IG and FB, not realizing how "bump obvious" I was looking.
Yep, we're expecting! Due at the end of February - pretty excited!!!
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Walking past Casa Loma on my way to "Dressing for Downton" at the Spadina House (pronouced Spa-deena - who knew?) My cast of "Into the Woods" at their finale show First ice cream truck of the year! Easter "nest" cupcakes - carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and toasted coconut and mini-eggs on top Family trampoline time Sister love Gave my hedgehog some hair with a mustard plant (lasted for about 3 months - pretty good) I always get tulips at St. Lawrence Market I had a whole bunch of bananas that were too ripe - so made banana-chocolate cupcakes Teacher Day at the zoo. Saw the new pandas and polar bear cub, and this peacock strutting his stuff Getting out the outdoor patio furniture and stringing up the lights Painted this little shelf and decked it out with some Anthropologie pulls (more on this later) Hydrangea cupcakes - didn't use buttercream so they melted pretty quickly into a tie-dye delicious mess Mother's Day love Had my family over for a Mother's Day BBQ One of many cat love pics of Earl Grey (my neighbour's cat who pretty much lives on my porch) Florals for spring (only the tulips are real) May Long Weekend at the cottage with Moose (right before he swatted at me, I'm sure) Decorating for the Music Banquet. The students picked pale yellow and I accented it with leafy greens and bright pinky-orange flowers. Marta and I - work wives Nothing like a little coordinated dancing from my awesome music students Go Jays Go (I'm wearing a Jay's shirt, I swear!) That Jays Game was followed by apps and margaritas at El Catrin in Distillery ...and then Ed's real scoop. And then we walked home. So Roger's Center to distillery to Queen & Broadview to home. That was about 3 hours of walking, but it felt good! Last rehearsal of the year with my students :( Enjoying a drink outside one warm spring evening I heart gelato Marta and I at Wonderland for our performance at the Music Festival Happy 25 years Skydome! The Roots concert outdoors Just a few sweet Tea-cher gifts.
This past weekend we were up at the cottage and Matt wanted to do a "New England Clam Bake" but since I've never had clams and they're not always a crowd pleaser, we changed it to to a crab boil. Pretty much means we cooked a whole bunch of stuff over the fire in a big pot. It was delicious. Pretty much Matt doing everything while we watch. Potatoes were done first, then corn, chorizo, crab legs and shrimp all in wine and herbs. Taking a beer break Dining Al Fresco on the dock Thank goodness for timers and remotes The result! Oh yes, and wine. Cooked the mussels last as we ran out of room in the big pot Note - you need a REALLY BIG pot. Sunset dinner The lake was a great way to wash hands after all the butter and oil. Beautiful - happy summer! **UPDATE: Adapted recipe HERE.**
A few days after I did this cake, I decided to have more fun with some birthday/St. Patty's Day cupcakes for Jamie and I at a family dinner. The cupcakes themselves were pound cakes, and the icing was a Bailey's infused. Not a butter cream this time, but there was still some butter in there for sure! Here are the results: Fun bubble spikes Grassy clover field (the same tip I used for the pink cake) Ummm this one failed just a bit... Rosettes - my favourite! Crinkly layers I honestly just went on Pinterest and googled the Wilton tips I had and there were so many tutorials and videos! Please I want to practice more but I don't want to eat all the cake...sooooo feel free to put in some requests so I can practice! I have the Martha Stewart cupcake book!!!
I am very proud of my first attempt at fancy cake icing for my own birthday cake this week. Matt and I went out to dinner on Thursday for my actual birthday, but since we were headed to my brother's house to celebrate the following evening, I decided to make a birthday cake! The recipe I used for the cake is Martha Stewart's White Cake. White because it has only egg whites and no yolks (or "no yellows" as I couldn't remember the word yolk when describing it yesterday...). The recipe says it yields 3 9-inch rounds, but I used 4 8-inch rounds, though they weren't completely full, which was fine. 4 layers is a LOT of layers... You will need a lot of butter (though to be fair some of that was for the buttercream icing) And room temperature eggs... And of course good old cobalt KitchenAid mixer Adding the colours was not that challenging. I added the pale pink to the entire mix, poured about a quarter of it into the first baking pan, added some more colour and mixed, poured, etc. Oh by the way, I have Wilton brand gel food colouring - it makes the cake and icing less runny. There is an actual pink colour, it's not red. I would suggest investing in the colour set - I've had them a long time and you only need a tiny amount to get a lot of colour. Once it's cooked, it doesn't look as pretty because of the slight browning of the outside due to the flour llining, but if you scrape off a bit you will see that indeed the inside cake is the perfect pink colour! Ghetto but effective way of warming up butter without melting it, haha. The icing is Martha Stewart's Swiss Meringue Buttercream with Vanilla Bean. The vanilla bean part just entailed slicing open a vanilla bean and putting it in the egg/sugar melting mixture (the first step in the recipe), and then removing it along with any large pieces once it was all melted together. You can use vanilla extract too, but this just adds more vanilla flavour to it. You NEED to make sure that for both the cake and icing, that the butter is room temperature, especially the icing. I made enough icing to ice between each of the layers and ice the sides, but then I only did a bit of fancy icing before I ran out. The butter I had sitting out for the second batch was not as warm so it made for a lumpy buttercream. Luckily a quick Google search led me to using my hair dryer to warm the buttercream while it mixed which completely smoothed it out! The above is what one batch of buttercream did. With so many layers I ran out, but I just made another half-batch which finished the job. I tinted it a bit darker to do the middle layers once the top was done, then again to do the bottom. I used the exact same method as I did for the cake. Note to people - gloves may be beneficial... Yeah it lasted for a while... And now for a ridiculous amount of beautiful cake pictures - I am very proud!!!! The piping was done using a Wilton 2D tip. I literally just squeezed down and pulled up. Really simple and quick - honestly. This tip also makes pretty roses if you swirl it, but this was my first try so I stuck to the basics. OOoooooOOOOohhh almost too pretty to eat... ...almost... It was really tasty...though again, 4 layers is a lot of cake... 6 people only polished off that much - definitely will serve 15 easily!
Matt and I don't really do a lot usually for Valentine's Day. We don't do cards or gifts. In the past we've gone to Leaf games, but mostly we just cook a good meal and enjoy each other's company. That's exactly what we did this year. I did a bit of prep work this time - I made a chocolate terrine for dessert (since I failed on New Years) on Thursday evening - it has to set 12-24 hours. I also made one for my work wife, Marta! Other than that, I just set the table when I got home on Friday, made a little garland (honestly took me 10 minutes) and Matt cooked dinner (pomegranate balsamic glazed sirloin steak with kale and tricolour quinoa). Cut strips of scrapbook paper, staple 2 ends together, pinch top of one and staple. Connect by the bottom staple of one heart with the top pinch of the other. Simple and quick! Heart napkin fold link HERE (there's is better than mine...) Dinner prep Final delicious product, along with a pinot noir! Chocolate terrine! Recipe from HERE.
Added some toasted almond slices around the edges, plus a dash of icing sugar and a pinch of sea salt. Served with fresh whipped cream. Let to cool in my grandmother's heart shaped baking pan. I cut the recipe in half as it served 12, and this did serve us 3 times, but with big pieces. It should be served in small doses - probably could have lasted 4-5 nights, haha, but it was just so good! Just as good as the one at our favourite restaurant, Goods and Provisions. This past Thanksgiving weekend Matt and I headed up to the cottage as usual, but this time it was just us kids. Specifically, us plus Jamie and Hope and their friend Jordan. So we had to cook all of Thanksgiving dinner without any parental advice, but it was really fun! Fall salad - arugula, apple, craisin, toasted pecans and toasted pumpkin seeds, cranberry relish vinagrette Jamie did the turkey Stuffing (and bacon from the turkey) There was also root mash - potatoes, parsnips, celeriac pureed instead of just potatoes Daily dose of Moose Oh yeah, I also have a post of just pretty leaves coming up...
While in Vegas, I got a text from my sister-in-law Hope saying "COME BACK TO MEEEE" - I guess she missed me. This was Thursday, so I asked if she wanted to come over with Jamie for a BBQ. I also invited Jessica and Adam. Saturday worked best for all, so that was good. Well I sort of forgot that we were flying home late Friday night and arriving home by 9 AM Saturday morning. Well just call me Martha because we slept until noon, I cleaned the house, Matt got groceries, and we threw together a backyard BBQ in a few hours. It also helped that Jessica made a delicious cheesy french onion dip appetizer and Hope made a yummy apple berry crumble for dessert. We did a fruity salad (from a Comfort of Cooking recipe), grilled bread with prosciutto (from a Barefoot Contessa recipe), and hamburgers with grilled corn. Lots of drinks and laughs with both sides of my family made a really good night. Plus we got to show off our bench seating and string lights! I realize now that we did not invite Meg (I think I thought she was working) - Meg if you were home all sad and lonely I'm sorry and I will take you to dinner this week!!!!! Love you littlest sister!!!!!! Bread, cheese, prosciutto, garlic, parsley, olive oil - assemble & BBQ - yum! (adapted from THIS recipe) Arugula, strawberry, peach, cucumber, goat cheese salad with a balsamic reduction (adapted from THIS recipe) Yes, Adam is wearing a leopard print snuggy! Good weekend - let's do it again really soon!
Here are just a few pictures from last weekend. Good Friday was spent at home with Matt, and we ordered sushi (it's fish!), and I got to drink wine (I gave it up for Lent)! Saturday we wandered around Leslieville and the Beach (pictures can be seen HERE), and Sunday we spent all day with family. The morning with my family for brunch, and the evening with Matt's family. I only have pictures of the morning, so here they are! I also had Monday off, where I did a ton of marking and prep while Matt was at work. I love Easter colours...also mini eggs and pretty much anything with peanut butter in it. Brunch mimosas - yum! My mom looks so happy - love it! Cheers to a happy Easter More mini eggs in a martini glass Family picture time - uncle Brian, Adam & Jessica, and grandpa! Matt and I French toast casserole, made with croissant - oh wow it was soooo good! Recipe HERE (with croissant substituted in - best to make the night before so the egg really soaks into the bread) "Homemade" fruit dip my brother made (from Epicure, haha) Love this picture of my mom and I - all minted out for Easter! Brunch is served Great host & hostess Guess who made brownie bottom cheesecake and M&M Easter cookies?
I'm starting to look like an Easter egg... Once Christmas was over, I pretty much went into hibernation mode - I caught up on sleep, ate way too much food, and just lounged around like a sloth. It was bad. I am slowly coming back to life, haha, but here's what did happen the past few months. Started off 2013 with a Harry Potter marathon - thoroughly enjoyed by both Matt and I! This happened. Ugh snow. Mmm delicious meal of shell pasta, white beans, sausage, and kale with lemon and parmesan. Morning stroll and shop in St. Lawrence Market Just one of the few flower selections from The January Cure (plus the weekly flowers are still going strong!) This is when I hate Canada and want to move to South America. Matt's speaker mounting plans 7 Year anniversary dinner at Fare Bistro Family dinner with both sets of parents - drinks in the Shangri La hotel, dinner at Reds Wine Tavern Moms and vintage barbie collection - including Midge! Found a bourbon chicken recipe..without bourbon...so we fixed that! Big hunk of pork shoulder covered in chipotle-coffee dry rub And the finished product with some coleslaw and Mill Street Coffee Porter One lazy Sunday of catching up with some home decor friends Day of closet-cleaning Dress shopping with Hope at Sash & Bustle Matt got an iPhone and I lost him to a world of distraction Delicious breakfast quiche in the making Brunch with my work wives Marta and Dawn Matt re-painting our pretty story board Me showing the world what an in love geek I am... Yay new cases - mine from MadebyGirl's Jen Ramos via Society6 From today - starting the kitchen prep - tore apart some bubbling plaster and patched the resulting spots Coming Up this Month: birthday celebrations in a week, kitchen painting and re-grouting of backsplash tile, March Break fun, World Skating Championships with my mom, and Easter! Should be a great month!
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