A Celebration Weekend

It was an eventful, yet happy and celebratory weekend!

Saturday I had a friend’s baby shower…and there’s nothing cuter than seeing all the cute baby clothes.

And on Sunday I celebrated another friend’s Bridal Shower, AND my aunt and uncle’s 60th birthdays!!

This morning I headed down to my blog-friend-turned-real-friend Elizabeth’s bridal shower!!

She is getting married in November, and today her bridesmaids threw her a beautiful shower down at her family’s house.

There were lots of gifts

Good food

And adorable cupcakes

I was also the first winner at Bridal Bingo!  Booya!

Tina, Elizabeth, and Me :)

I can’t wait for their big day!

Straight from the shower, I headed to my aunt and uncle’s house for a birthday bash that my cousins threw for them!

No lack of amazing food…

Fresh figs on Dubliner cheese…awesome combination!!

Giant bowl of tomato & mozzarella salad!!

The main dish…Lobster Rolls…tons and tons of lobster rolls

On hot buttery rolls.  Drooling just looking at the picture now.  I had one, and then split another with Brian later.

But I think my FAVORITE dish of the day was this Mexican Seafood Cocktail

It was similar to a cold gazpacho, but it had lots of crab meat, shrimp, and big chunks of avocado!

SOOooo delicious.  The recipe is here on Epicurious, and I NEED to make this soon!!       

There was also two huge Pavlovas for dessert (giant meringue topped with fresh whipped cream and strawberries),  along with a pink champagne birthday cake!  

It was a fun and delicious afternoon with family!

This weekend flew by, and sadly work tomorrow!  

Question… what’s you’re favorite meal to make in the heat of the summer??  I feel like I’ve had less and less meals to post on here because I’m just not cooking as much or as creatively in this hot summer heat!!

What’s in the Middle? The White Stuff.

Let’s not talk about the events of last night.

So instead I’ll just talk about the food that I just happen to make for this particular Sunday night ;)

I made two items to bring over to my friends place, and one I’ve been dying to make since I first tried it back in September!

Pizza Monkey Bread!!  Elina made it for a little after-work shin-dig that she hosted back in September, and ever since then I knew it would be the PERFECT food to serve for a party!  I’d been waiting for a good opportunity and I' finally decided that the Superbowl (there, I said it) would be the best excuse to eat little hot balls of dough stuffed with cheese and pepperoni! 

I used the same recipe she used, from Confessions of a Foodie Bride, and since I was also making a dessert, I opted to purchase the dough and sauce to make my life easier.

I grabbed a ball of plain and a ball of multi-grain pizza dough from Whole Foods.

I also used the suggestion of weighing out the pieces for uniformity.

Brian helped me with this one, and as I divided up the dough, he started flattening each piece and filling them with a slice of pepperoni and a chunk of mozzarella cheese.

Teamwork!!  I then coated each piece in garlic butter, filled up the Bundt pan, wrapped it in plastic wrap and headed to our friend’s apartment where I baked it up hot and fresh!

Not surprisingly this was a huge hit!!  I mean, who doesn’t love pizza in bite size form!      

I also made something on the sweet side.

I knew I wanted to make a dessert, and this wasn’t actually my first choice, but my friends rave about these cookies from Flour Bakery and I have wanted to try my hand at them.  Plus I love making something I know people will get excited about!

Oh-Oreo’s, Oh-Oreo’s,   What’s in the Middle?   The WHITE stuff! (sung to the tune of NKOTB “The Right Stuff”…no?  no one ever sang that version back in the day?)   Nevermind…

Here in the Boston area, Flour bakery is pretty well known for these replica’s of the iconic chocolate wafer cookie.  In fact, they sell out often!  I remember one time I went to Flour, and really wanted an Oreo…the line was so long and in the time I was waiting someone phoned in an order and took them ALL!!  I WAS SO SAD!

No more sadness now, because these are actually quite simple to make.

Lucky for you the recipe is online here!  The cookbook also has an option for a Peanut Butter filling, so I did half and half. 

The dough comes together pretty fast and easy. 

Lots of butter and chocolate!

I used salted butter for everything, and just omitted the salt that the recipe called for…I usually do this when I bake and everything comes out great.

I forgot to grab a picture before I added the dry to the wet ingredients, but the butter, chocolate, sugar, egg mixture solidifies fast!  It’s still very soft and workable, I was just surprised.

At this point the recipe recommends diving in with your hands to mix the dough.  Make sure you WASH YOUR HANDS GOOD FIRST…then dig in!

Once the dough is mixed, it sits out for an hour to firm up.  Then form into a log on wax paper.

The recipe calls for a 2.5” diameter roll…I wanted my cookies smaller so I just made my log longer and narrower…mine was just under 2” in diameter.

At this point it’s hard to get the long nice and round, mine was more of a long rectangle.  But once you wrap it up you can roll it out a bit, and from there you chill it for 2 hours, taking it out every 15min or so to roll it and make sure it’s not getting a flat bottom.

I didn’t do that every 15 min…I did it maybe 2 or 3 times during the 2 hours and it turned out just fine.

I did this the night before, and this was my dough log the next morning.

(so many jokes…)

Ready to be sliced into cookies!

I actually used my measuring tape and scored off 1/4” slices to get them roughly the same size.

I found that my cookies baked up in 16-18 min.

Once cool, I arranged them in pairs, and tried to match them up by size.  They are all fairly uniform but some definitely were bigger than others.

The filling was a simple butter cream…my FAVORITE kind!

Your standard butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, milk.  Classic.

I filled about half of the cookie pairs.

Then used the same bowl to whip up the PB filling.

I can’t pick a favorite, both were delicious!!

My Oreo-loving friends were thrilled! 

Kind of want one right now with some milk…  Good night!! 

What was the best thing you ate last night???

Mid-week Parties and Rescue Dogs!

One of the awesome things about having blogger friends, is blogger-friend parties :)  I mean, you know there will be an endless supply of delicious food and lots of stuff to talk about!

Tuesday night, Elina had a little party at her condo so that we could enjoy some time on her patio before it gets too cold!

There were friends, bloggers, and some blogger +1’s, not to mention a delicious spread of eats

warning: crappy dark iphone photos..

Off the top of my head, some of the delicious items were:

• Elina made pepperoni monkey bread (hot out of the oven), and Russian cheesecake pops!  Both were amazing.
• Shannon brought a savory cheesecake topped with homemade tomato jam.  That jam was delicious, we were brainstorming different uses for it :)
• Cara made some zucchini roll-ups stuffed with goat cheese, pistachios, and mint.
• Megan and Meghan picked up some tasty Whole Foods treats, such as slices of baguette topped with ricotta and sour cherry jam…this combo was AWESOME!
• I made a quick batch of Feta and Roasted Red Pepper dip the night before, and just kept it in the fridge at work during the day.

It was a beautiful night and I had a fantastic time talking with everyone!  The one downfall of mid-week parties is being extra tired at work tomorrow, but it’s worth it sometimes :)

Big thank you to Elina! 

The other thing I wanted to talk about was my Fur-baby.

Tomorrow marks our 1 year anniversary of when this little bundle of love came into our life!  (yeah I jumped the gun on twitter…it’s actually the 30th, but that was a Thursday last year!)

I just wanted to that this opportunity to just remind everyone that if you’re thinking of getting a dog PLEASE consider a Rescue!

Before I started looking, I didn’t know that much about Rescue dogs, and so I’m sure I’m not the only one.

I think sometimes the word “rescue” or “shelter” dog gets a bad rep.  Some people think it means troubled dogs, or dogs with behavior issues, or the not-as-popular breeds.  Now, unfortunately there are many dogs out there that are troubled and have issues…not that their born that way, but the poor things ended up in bad homes and weren’t properly cared for.  Still even some of those dogs just need a little love and attention to become your perfect pet :)

On the other hand, there are also TONS of dogs out there that were surrendered for nothing that they did, but simply that their owners couldn’t care for them for some reason or another.  Sad but true.  A lot of people get pets when they really shouldn’t or aren’t ready.

Sure, it might take a little more effort than just buying a puppy from a breeder or a store, but putting in that extra effort can be incredibly rewarding.  Even better if you find a great shelter or rescue to work with…they want to make sure to match you with the dog that best suits your life.  They don't want to risk someone ending up with a dog that they might take back to the shelter.

There are also rescues for ALL breeds!  I knew I wanted a Shih Tzu or something similar, so I ended up working with a rescue that focuses on small dogs :)  Getting all Rescued and Rehomed was very thorough and worked with me until we found a perfect match… 

This was him right after we brought him home:

I seriously don’t think I could have asked for a better dog for me and Brian.  I’ll still never know why he was brought to a shelter, but the woman at the rescue found him there (at a high-kill shelter) and brought him home to eventually come to his forever-home with us.

He was house broken, calm, loves car rides, LOVES to cuddle, always wants to be near us, we can leave him home with free range of the house and not have to worry about him getting into anything, doesn’t chew on anything except his toys, and just makes me SO incredibly happy every time I see his little face.

Well anyways…enough typing.  Just wanted to say how amazing this year has been with our newest family member, and it makes me that much happier to know we saved him :)

 

I think he needs a furry sibling… ;)

Dogs make me happy. 

South of the Border BBQ

p.s. still time to enter my giveaway!!

There’s always been a Memorial Day weekend BBQ at my place. It started…I’m thinking 5 years ago when I was living in Somerville with my bff Jocelyn! Brian’s birthday usually falls around then so we had a bbq/party and the tradition stuck.

Last year, it was our first big BBQ at our new House with our new patio furniture…and a little more tame than years past ;)

Recap of last years BBQ

This year was different. The Half Marathon was that weekend and the last thing I needed was to be overly stressed by hosting a party…but I still wanted a party!!

Solution = SMALL party :)

I find, at least for myself, I get the most stressed about having people over when I have multiple “groups” of friends coming. They all might know each other, but I constantly feel like I need to spend time and chat with everyone while still trying to get all the last minute food details ready.

I’m much more relaxed once everyone has eaten haha.

So in order to have a stress-free gathering I stuck to a small group of people…9, including Brian and myself.

Although, I still managed too make enough for 20…oh well! Leftovers!!

The Menu was entirely inspired by the June issue of Cooking Light!

There were SO many awesome sounding Mexican-ish dishes in there, that I decided to have a Mexican themed BBQ!

The Menu:

Drinks

Minted Lemon-Lime Watermelon Aqua Fresca (non-alcoholic, I had two lovely pregnant ladies that day)
Skinny Girl Margaritas!
Brian’s beer (he has 2 varieties on tap in the basement)

Snacks

Homemade Guac – I special requested my friend to make it since she uses our FAVORITE recipe from the Barefoot Contessa.
Mango Salsa – homemade by another guest!

Main Dishes

Flank Steak Tacos – made the recipe for the steak and had the options out for people to make tacos: tortillas, cheese, salsa, sour cream, avocado
Ancho Chili Chicken – a favorite family recipe! Already on the blog!!

Sides

Cilantro Lime Rice – made by a guest
Baked Black Beans with Chorizo – LOVED this recipe, the chorizo gives it so much flavor.
Grilled Corn on the Cob – never got around to making the jalapeño butter, but I bet it’s delicious.
Pasta salad – made by a guest, minus the chicken
Fruit Salad – made by a guest

Dessert!!

Margarita Ice-Cream Sandwiches – I wasn’t in love with the sound of these at first, but they looked so cute and went perfectly with the theme!
SOOO happy I made them, they are delicious!!
Dessert Nachos! – totally came up with this one in my head and I am obsessed with how they came out! Definitely going to do a full post on these :)

The plan:

Friday:

• Shop for all ingredients and drinks. Also assess if you need any paper plates, or other disposable items. I already had enough at home.


• Clean!!


• Make cookie dough for ice cream sandwiches (it has to chill before baking)
  

Saturday:

• bake off cookies for ice cream sandwiches
  


• make marinade for chicken, rub for steak, and get all meats into large Ziploc bags to marinate overnight


• make Ancho chili sauce
  


• Make/Prepare beans to be baked the next day. Don't add cheese, tomatoes, or green onion yet.


• Make simple syrup, and prep lime juice for watermelon aqua fresca


• chop up watermelon


• Prepare tortilla chips for dessert nachos
  

Sunday:

• Run half marathon (if that’s what you’re doing that morning)


• come home, shower, and get ready


• final clean up/pick up


• husk corn


• Guests Arrive!!


• Fire up the grill and start grilling the meats, then corn


• Place toppings on beans then bake


• Make your friends a batch of Watermelon Aqua Fresca
  


• After everyone eats, sneak back to the kitchen to make the chocolate sauce and whip the cream for the desserts :)


• ENJOY!

It was a fun low-key, relaxing day. No one stayed too late, we did a quick clean up, and were able to crash at a reasonable hour considering we had got up around 6 that morning!

How do you handle the stress of being the hostess?? No matter how stressed I get, I still LOVE having people over! Usually my problem is a bite off more than I can chew…we probably didn’t need as much food, especially 2 desserts…oh well! I’ve been enjoying mini ice cream sandwiches all week!

Happy Friday!! I have my first dance performance tonight for the company I am in up in NH. This is sort of a practice performance for just one of the pieces, but still…a little nervous :) Our big show isn’t until September.