Search Results for "mise en place"

This day was all about spoiling my kids. After our world-class breakfast at Outerlands, we drove downtown for a day of shopping and luxurious spa treatments.

Check out Marissa glaring at me in the rear-view mirror. I guess I was irritating her from the back seat. Hmm, a mother irritating a daughter, now that’s new!

Be sure and stick with me through this rather lengthy post. It was a big day so there is a lot to share, but you have to read the end and check out our spa time and our dinner choice… even if you just scroll down and skip the shopping parts. :-

First, we ducked into the Apple store because I wanted Connor to see the awesome theater-style classroom. I know, how much Apple can one person do in a long weekend?! Even our newest store in Scottsdale has nothing like this.

As we walked by we noticed they were demonstrating exactly how to use iMovie. We sat in on the class and learned so much that the rest of the weekend I was taking videos so that I can test my newfound knowledge. And guess what? I’m working on it, and there will be an iMovie on this very blog, very soon.

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In yesterday’s post, I purposely left out something that we did on our way to Santa Cruz. About halfway between San Mateo and Santa Cruz sits the city of Cupertino. If you have an Apple product, you’ve heard of Cupertino. It is the time zone setting on every Apple device; from the iPhone, and the MacBooks, to the iPad. I know this because I’ve reset it on every Apple item I own.  Let’s see – Marissa and I are both on our second MacBooks, Connor has one, I asked for and received an iPad for Christmas and then didn’t use it much, so it now belongs to Connor, and each of the three of us has an iPhone and we all, of course, (including Dave)  have iPods. Once we get rid of Dave’s stupid Blackberry and his horrid PC and buy him an iPhone and a big old desktop Mac, our transition will be complete to a true Apple-only family!

Yes, I happily guzzle the Kool-Aid, in fact, give me some more! I’m thinking that Apple TV maybe my next move. Besides all of the Apple stuff we have, I’ve been a bit obsessed with the subject because I’ve been reading Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. It is the authorized biography that was released soon after Jobs’s death in October 2011. What a complicated, brilliant, narcissistic ass he was! I started the book the Tuesday before we left and finished on the plane, on our way home. I highly recommend it if you like biographies, Apple, tech stuff, Steve Jobs, or just want to learn about the impact on our culture and way of life that Jobs most certainly made. Whether you own an Apple product or not!

Cupertino is mentioned on about every page, so a stop there was a must. I had no idea where we were going, so we drove into town and started to look for Apple.  It didn’t take more than a minute before we saw buildings with the Apple logo on the signs.

I knew there had to be a bigger grander place than these little buildings, so I asked Siri (on my iPhone 4s) to direct me to Apple headquarters. She came through with flying colors. I have a love/hate relationship with Siri.

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I had hoped to post about our trip to San Francisco, but I haven’t been able to get all the photos formatted yet…  tomorrow… San Fran, I promise!

Until then, here is the quick and easy dinner I made for Connor and I, the night before we flew off to see Marissa.

Connor has always loved taquitos. You know – those thin, crunchy, nasty frozen sticks. He also adores Buffalo chicken wings.  I made these Buffalo taquitos just for him. A healthier (especially if you use low-fat cream cheese and sour cream) version of those fried greasy sticks!

A little side note: I brought home my tortillas, opened the package and there were only 9 tortillas! It clearly states on the package that there are 10 tortillas, but I only got nine.  What’s up with that? It makes me wonder if someone got hungry at the grocery store, opened the package, and ate one, or if there was a miscount while packaging… hmmm?

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After THIS POST from the first week of classes, in which I put up a “before the storm” photo of my kitchen – I had comment from my friend, Sydney, saying, “I’d like to see the “after” photo :)”

Trust me, no one really wants to see the “after” photos!

Let me put it this way, it took me 95 minutes to mop my kitchen and breakfast room floors on Wednesday afternoon. I use a steam mop and I went over the floors 3 times with 3 different double-sided white micro-fiber pads… all six sides were black by the time I was done.  A few minutes later, I accidentally dropped an ice-cube on the floor… it’s so dang hot here that it started to melt on contact.  So after picking it up, I got a paper towel to get the water off the floor. With only one brief wipe, the paper towel was dirty – and this was after three moppings! There is no winning. The only solution is to have my marble floors stripped and polished, once classes are over at the end of the month.  Now those are before-and-after photos I promise to show you!

Not only did I receive Sydney’s comment from that blog post but also an email from another friend who asked how much time it takes me to set up for classes each morning and just what goes into a class day.  I decided to share a sort of “show and tell” with a sample of a day – yesterday to be exact.

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On Saturday, Lorie and I went on a field trip to Queen Creek.  Our first stop was the Schnepf Farms Peach Festival where we did not “polish off plates of peach-topped pancakes”, but we did “trek through the orchards” to pick peaches.

I’d love to report that it was a lovely day at the farm, but if the truth is told, it was too damn hot to be lovely! And schlepping around a box of heavy peaches didn’t help either.

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I am naming this “bonus salad” because while creating it, my intention was to include it in the “Take your Lunch to Work Week” that I just wrapped up for my sweet Marissa. But once I got into it, I slowly came to the realization that this takes far too much time and effort than required for an easy lunch to brown bag… that is unless you use it as leftovers… from dinner the night before. In that case, it’s perfect!

I made this a week ago Sunday and, as with most Sundays, we had my dad over for dinner. Dave and Dad devoured this thing. They loved it so much that they each had not only seconds but thirds!

If you are lucky enough to have leftovers and want to brown-bag them the next day – here is what you do: Pack the greens and the feta together in one container or zip-lock. Pack the mushroom-asparagus-rice mixture in a microwave-safe container. Nuke the mushroom mixture to just warm it through. Place your greens and feta on a plate and top it with warm stuff. Yum… makes me wish I would have had leftovers of my own last Monday. 🙁

The “bonus pics” in the title refer to some iPhone pictures of a few of the beyond delicious courses we had at Binkley’s last night. How I love that place! You’ll find them below the recipe.

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Challah is an egg bread that holds deep religious significance in the Jewish faith.

“According to Jewish tradition, the three Sabbath meals (Friday night, Saturday lunch, and Saturday late afternoon) and two-holiday meals (one at night and lunch the following day) each begin with two complete loaves of bread.  This “double loaf” commemorates the manna that fell from the heavens when the Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years after the Exodus from Egypt. The manna did not fall on the Sabbath or holidays; instead, a double portion would fall the day before the holiday or sabbath.” (excerpt from Wikipedia)

Challah recipes always make enough dough for two loaves. Three important steps to the perfect challah are; three risings instead of the usual two (one of those being a slow-rise in the refrigerator), using two coats of egg wash for a shiny lacquer-like crust, and not over-baking.

Challah is delicious and used the next day for French toast.  Especially loaves with raisins, or in this case, craisins.  I substituted dried cranberries for the raisins, as my family prefers craisins to raisins. We’ll be enjoying the plain loaf with our Easter dinner on Sunday and the craisin loaf for a French toast breakfast on Easter Monday.

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Finally, the day has come to show you our purchases from the Rose Bowl Flea Market! At the top is my pièce de résistance – a gorgeous wood and cane chair painted white, distressed, and then reupholstered in burlap and vintage grain sacks. Oh, I can not begin to tell you how gorgeous it is – the pictures do not do it justice! I adore the “125 LBS” on the back of the chair. It makes me wish I could just place it right in the center of a room and put it on a spinning platform.

If you’ve ever been to my house, you may be thinking, “What room is that chair sitting in? I don’t remember any room in Linda’s house looking like that.”  You are right, this is Sheila’s living room at her cottage on Coronado Island in San Diego, California. Before I can share with you any of the other wonderful finds we bought, I just have to share with you the “story” of our trip. The trials, tribulations, and the seriously sheer stupidity on our part while planning our big shopping spree!  Honestly, what good is a trip without a story attached?

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This is what your life looks like when you are looking through puffy watery eyes.

All blurry and miserable. Puffs and NyQuil, that is what got me through a full week of a massive head and chest cold.  I did my very best to keep it to myself and not pass it along to Dave. I slept in another room every night and washed my hands like a criminal trying to wash away the proof. It didn’t work. I’m over it and he has it in full force.

Luckily for him, I know how to make chicken soup! Stat! Quick, easy, tasty, cold-curing chicken soup.  And just in case the bug travels from this keyboard, through the internet, and onto you… you can make it too.  Get yourself to Costco, stock up on Puffs and NyQuil, and pick up one of their huge-breasted five-dollar rotisserie chickens.

Seriously, these are huge chickens with the breast meat weighing in at more than the entire amount of meat you’d get from a grocery store chicken! One and a third pounds of breast meat in the case of this particular bird!

I was actually going to title this post – “Big Breasts”, but considering all the spam I already get (the post that gets the most spam is titled “Manly Man Salad”) … yeah, I just don’t want to attract any more of that sort of attention!

So, back to the soup. Put in any vegetables you like or have on hand. I can’t stand cooked carrots, but Dave loves them, and since this soup IS for him – in went the carrots. I also had leftover sliced potatoes and a roasted poblano pepper – in they went. I have previously spoken of my affection for the under-rated and overlooked broccoli stems, they are in there. You get the point, whatever suits you and your family’s taste – put it in.

As for the chicken itself, I put in mostly dark meat and save those big breasts for sandwiches and such, you do as you please.  See – there is nearly a pound of dark meat for the soup.

After you pull off all the meat, you’ll use the chicken carcass to enrich a box of purchased chicken broth. You will be on your way to feeling at least 90% better in no time.

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Remember my Maple-Bacon Cupcakes? They are SO good, that even skeptical Marissa fell for them. Well today we have another sweet item featuring bacon… toffee.  Trust me, it works. I’d heard of toffee with bacon before, but had yet to taste it. I’ve decided to give bacon peanut brittle a try. Trust me again, it’s good… I promise.

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