Happy New Year

This is the time of new beginnings.  The year is ending, but with it, an eclipse has come, and a fresh moon brings a new start.  You might be thinking, well, that eclipse was days ago, but what you may not realize is that it was one of the first eclipses that coincided with a mercury in retrograde and a winter solstice in almost 600 years, thus making it the longest day of the year with the significance of a new beginning.

With new beginnings in mind, I want you to keep perspective.  Whether you are a parent feeding a tiny human, a new couple, or a single person, food is meant to be two things:  first and foremost, it is meant to be fuel.  Secondly, pleasure.  Why eat if your food tastes like crap?  If you don't enjoy what you're eating, why will anyone else enjoy what you make?

My husband is going to be traveling a lot over the next few weeks, so I'll be sharing some quick and easy recipes that are not only effortless to make, but simple enough to make ahead of time, freeze, and reheat when you're ready to just pop something in the freezer.

Here's one of my favorite easy peasy recipes that's good enough for New Years:

(1) Package Puff Pastry
(1/2lb) Cheese (I prefer gruyere or cheddar)
Pepperoni (as much as you like)
1 egg

• Heat your oven to 400 degrees.  Your puff pastry will more than likely come in strips of three.  Cut each strip into three.  Wrap the puff pastry around the pepperoni and cheese. 
• Crack your egg into a small bowl.  Add a splash of water.  Whisk until well mixed.  Dip a pastry brush into the mixture and paint the mixture on each of your pastry.  Place each pastry on a parchment lined cookie sheet.   Bake for 20-30 minutes (the dough will be very puffy and look golden-brown.)

Enjoy!

Have a marvelous New Years!!!

Merry Christmas!!!

It's officially my favorite day of the year. No, I don't mean Christmas, I mean Christmas Eve. The stockings are hung, the cookies are baked, presents are wrapped, Santa's cookie tray and cup are out waiting to be filled with goodies for the big man, and somewhere, Santa is gearing up and ready to go!

For as long as I can remember, I've always loved the anticipation of Christmas morning. It's not really so much about the presents, but the surprises I have in store for my family that excites me. When I was little, I used to squirrel over to Santa's Secret Shop and make my parents stockings. Now that I'm a "grown-up", I still love making everyone stockings with little gifts that I know would make them laugh, or remind them of when they were little. For me, that's one of the main points of Christmas (besides celebrating Jesus). For 363 days a year, people are "grown-ups". This is the one time of year it's okay to be a little kid with faith in a guy in a red suit who's going to make all of your dreams come true. It's acceptable to even have dreams- which as many of you know, that is most certainly frowned upon in our "adult world". It's really funny, because even at 28 years old, I still find myself looking out the window for that little red light and listening for the bells that I heard so many years ago as a young, eager little girl awaiting Christmas morning.

No, these last few posts haven't been about sharing recipes or experiments, and honestly, I haven't been much in the mood for making anything crazy. Right now, I'm appreciating all of the wonderful people that I have in my life (especially since my little bro is home safe from the Navy), and am doing what you're supposed to be doing during the holidays...stuffing everyone full of cookies and good cheer.

Have a very Merry Christmas everyone!!! May all of your dreams come true!!!! (and not too many pies thrown at family members!!)

Captain Christmas Strikes Again

To give you an idea of just how much I love Christmastime, I'll share my husband's nickname for me:  "Captain Christmas".  Every year, I drag his sleepy self over to the tree farm near our house the morning after Thanksgiving to get our tree.  Then he assists me with the lights.  We hang our greenery, send our cards, and then watch Home Alone and Love Actually to kick off the season.

This year, we got to the farm so early that the trees weren't labeled by height.  Of course, the first tree that we both like is gigantic, and each one after that seemed too small.  So, after we had my six foot six husband stand next to it and it seemed like it would fit in our house, we strapped it to the car and brought it home.
Needless to say, the tree did NOT fit in our house.  It was like something out of a Lucy episode!  I hunted around our house for a saw or an axe, and came up with two rusty saws.  My poor husband had to saw four feet off the tree!!  At the time it was kind of hilariously awful, but afterward we just cracked up because we had a small tree on our back porch haha.

And that's how we kicked off our holiday season!  Hacking up trees, making greenery, and drinking lots of Boulder to heal our blistered hands!

Holiday Catch Up

My life has been a total whirlwind since Thanksgiving.  My daughter has become a delightfully fun wild thing, climbing furniture, running through the house, building things, playing with her "babies", running around parks, playgrounds and children's museums- basically just being your average toddler.  For me, it's been this really wonderful, exciting experience to get to be a part of her experiencing all these awesome things for the first time, like a few weeks ago when she went down the slide on her own, giggling and squeeling the entire way down with me cheering, having a silent heart attack as she went flying down the swirly slide.  I cherish these moments, and I'm so grateful that I get to stay home and have them with her.

On the home front, I guess I owe all of you a big catch up.  This new, fast moving toddler I've got over here has kept me from being on the computer much (she bangs on the keys every time I open it in front of her, and yes, she can reach the table), which has hindered my blogging.  Here's a quick catch up of some of my food-ventures...

Thanksgiving:

 

I made WAY too much food, but hey, we ate for over a week after!  These pictures don't really do all the food justice, but I was too tired after cooking to supervise how many or what kind of photos were taken.

Christmas 2010:

This is only the beginning...but here's what I made this past weekend:

Chocolate peanut butter drop cookies, peanut butter cookies, chewy surprise cookies, ginger cookies and chocolate chip:

Ginger Cookies:

Chewy Surprise:

 

I have also made macaroons and sugar cookies, but I haven't taken photos of them yet because the macaroons aren'd chocolate dipped yet and the sugar cookies are waiting to be decorated.  Check in Wednesday for more holiday treats!

Checking In

Things have been very busy since Thanksgiving.  Kyle's been working twelve hour days and we've both been trying to get everything ready for Christmas.  Needless to say, the blog kind of fell by the wayside a bit since I've been pretty zonked.

To be completely honest, I've been too tired to cook anything exciting.  The only super fun thing I've done as of late is making Julia Child's baked eggs in ramekins.  While the flavor was great, the texture seemed a bit off-putting to me, so I think I'm going to make them again to see if it was our wonky oven (it changes tempurature randomly from time to time).

This weekend is going to be filled with holiday treats, so be prepared to see some yummy holiday goodies!!