Hello ladies and gents! Homeboys and homegirls! Mostly just the underdogs and the outcasts though because those are my peeps. I am trying to revive this blog because I recently realized how much I enjoyed this side project. I have always been an avid reader which lead to a life long love of stories. Somehow (I'm sure there are some studies out there that prove it.) I was able to improve my writing and storytelling through this habit. I'm out of practice so I'm trying to get my reps up thus this post. 

Despite not writing about my food adventures, I have been cooking this entire extended break. There's been a lot of changes in my life so I need to adjust my practice. I don't bake as much but I do love a dinner party. Here's some of the food gatherings you missed knowing about because I didn't share in real time.

Mother's Day family brunch:

'Tis that time of year again... when I take a weekend out of my so busy life and dedicate a few days to creating edible gifts to express my love and appreciation for those close to me. This year made a set of four flavored salts:

- Pomogranete
- Vanilla
- Sriricha
- Lemon Lavendar

I also handmade cards to send with these small tokens of affection. Unfortunately, I was so busy drying salt that I forgot to take pictures of the process. I am out of practice on the food blogging front. I've been a busy bee outside of the kitschen! However, the whole thing is pretty simple. Take some salt, add the flavor you want into it and (if needed) dry it out in the oven. The times when you need to dry out the salt mixture is when you add a liquid (duh!!!). Making vanilla salt is similar to making vanilla sugar... take a bean, split, scrape and mix. No drying required. When drying the other salts I pre-heated the oven to 350, spread the mixture on a baking sheet and then turned off the oven once I placed the salt inside. It usually takes less than 10 minutes in the oven but, be sure to check because you don't want your salt mixture to burn!

On the home front I tried to keep things simple. I decided to make the no knead sticky buns I made a year or so ago. I am happy to report my continued attempts to use yeast has resulted in improvement in making bread! Also, this basic dough is a gift that keeps on giving! You can find the recipe here.

First up... sticky buns! I pre-made the dough and let it sit in the fridge for a day. Then the afternoon before Christmas day I rolled out the dough and prepped the buns into a pan. This way on Christmas morning I could pull them out of the fridge to rise while we opened presents.

To bring some balance to this decadent treat I pulled out my inherited cast iron skillet and made a frittata!






I had some left over dough so I took it and made some mini-loaves of cinnamon swirl bread.





Next up for me is using my new spherical cake pan to make a pinata cake stuffed with candy! My prior attempt failed b/c I over filled the pans. Also, on my wish list is this message cookie cutter set. Happy new year and happy cooking!

Wow. It's been a while guys. I have been spending a lot of time away from my official home front and kitchen. Instead I've been keeping my gramps company on the West side of the Mitten. While I have no aversion to small kitchens I do like to remain on good terms with my PaPa. One way I do that is by not making a "mess" in his kitchen. So my baking and kitschen adventures haven't been as frequent as of late. But, being in the city of rapids has allowed me to do some foodie exploring! So without further chitter chatter here's a little bit of what I've been up to this past month-ish.

Back in February I planned on sending Valentine's packages to people. I did... for the most part. But two of my favorite ladies didn't get their packages due to life (it's a biotch sometimes). I was able to make it up to them by sending some spring sweets.

I have gotten over me fear of yeast but sometimes a lady just wants some bread... quick like. So I looked through my bookmarks and found a recipe for a mocha swirl quick bread. Then I pulled out my favorite peanut butter cookie recipe and made a batch of those too. I have been really into giant cookies lately so I made those suckers BIG. I portioned them out with a 1/4 measuring cup!

After mailing out those goodies I hopped into the car and drove to Beer City! No. I do not have any pictures of breweries- although I have gone to a few. But I did find a nice coffee and tea place where I can use wifi and get my daily dose of fancy caffeine.



Another day I used my handy dandy Yelp app to find a place that sold pho. Have I told you how much I like a good soup? Pho is harty! And it's a party in my mouth. I am not a fan of beef tendons and tripe so I played it safe and got pho ga. I know! All the foodie purist are booing me right now. But I know what I will and won't eat. So that leaves more for you!


Over the weekend I took some time to head back to the Deuce for some quality time with friends. I also had some bizness to take of. A lady be busy ya'll! While in A2 I made my usual stop for some supplies at Trader Joe's. While there I scored a new favorite....



When I got back to GR it was right around Easter... this meant a big family dinner. Luckily I was only in charge of bringing a side. I ended up making a dessert and some cornbread. Who doesn't like cornbread?
 

...and I'll treat you better than you ever had before. I think that's the chorus of a Slackers song. It's Valentine's day mofos! I may be single but I still like to play cupid and spread a little love. It's my personal assault on the holiday industrial complex. In the name of Saint Valentine I'mma make a massackery (massacre+mockery) of V-day being all about couples.

As usual I began combing the interwebs for DIY crafty projects to make/bake and include in my Valentine packages early... Like the beginning of January. I needed things that were both foodie and kid friendly. I made 2 sets of V-day treats. One for my nieces/nephews and another for friends.I found quite a few kid Valentines I liked online.

• Lego jewelery valentines
• Animal valentines
• Mustache valentines
• Funny valentines

In the end I chose (surprise!) the punny (funny+pun) one. As my nieces and nephews get older I am finding it hard to transition the crafts I make them for them into more age appropriate things. Small tchotskes no longer really cut it, so the animal bracelet valentines were out. I wanted something a bit more gender neutral so the Lego jewelery valentines were nixed. That left the mustache and funny valentines... I chose the funny valentines because ALL kids love a good fart joke! I couldn't find mini-whoopie cushions at my local dollar store. So I bought regular sized ones and made do.

FLAVOR BUTTONS

I saw this instructable for not-Altoids online. The whole process was so easy! How could I not take half a day hunched over a counter top and making these little pieces of sweetness? I'm hesitant to call them mints since they don't really have mint flavors...except for one. I chose 2 foodie and 2 kid friendly flavors:

• red licorice
• cola
• mint chocolate chip
• mango

COFFEE LOLLIPOPS

Hard candy... I've been wanting to make gourmet lollies for a while. The first time I burnt the sugar and had to scratch the whole batch. I then took the time to test my candy thermometer and found out it was 50 degrees off! With this mental note in mind I gathered together some sugar and tried it all again.  Sprinkle Bakes has a lot of fun with sugar recipes and this is one of them.





Having a good  candy thermometer is the key! Also, I like to think making hard sugar candy is kind of like BBQing. Low and slow is the way to go. I started my mixture on medium heat and gradually cranked it up to a boil. I was wary of everything boiling over, making a mess, burning or melting my skin off. It takes a bit of time but keeping your eyes on the prize (and the thermometer) is worth it.

Friends' packages included these lollies, some flavor buttons and those crispy chocolate wafer cookies. My momma also didn't raise no fool so I included a hand written note too. Both the friend and kid packages got wrapped up assembly line style and shipped out.

A paper bag... simple and classic!

ME MUM

Who's my greatest love of all? My mother of course! She birthed me. What's a greater gift than that? I love my mom lots and sometimes I want to give her more than a hug. She's a busy lady and it can be hard for her to take the time to do something she wants to do. I spotted a great Valentines day deal on Travelzoo and conspired with my siblings to get it for our mother. The voucher was for a massage with wine and chocolate! The sad thing about online vouchers is there's really no tactile opening experience. So I got out my craft crate and made something for her to open. I've seen similar set ups used for save-the-date/wedding announcements. Kelly over at Studio DIY even took the idea and put it in a box (literally).



I cut out some ID card sized pieces of white card stock. The 1st included a "dear mom we love you lots" message. The 2nd were the details of her massage voucher. Finally the 3rd promised a ride to said spa and dinner after. I strung the cards/tags on the bakers twine and some craft punched holes to make a garland. I taped one end into the envelope and carefully layered it all in. I used some double sided tape to keep the pull-tab of the garland separate to make it easier to pull it out.




That's how I do Valentine's Day. What about you?