Strawberry Bellini

I'm very glad to be living near a large city with a multitude of restaurants as opposed to living in a rural town with about 5 different food options. However, with that said, we have yet to find a replacement for Bella Cucina. Sure, we found an Italian restaurant that had great food, but it's part of a chain and they don't have my favorite dish (fettuccine fra di avilo) or my favorite drink to order (other than a cosmopolitan), a strawberry bellini.

Well, Erik and I are still working on perfecting the fettuccine dish, but we mastered the bellini! We were shopping at Costco the other day and came across the giant container of strawberries, when I suggested that we try making daiquiris, or better yet, strawberry bellinis!

Next came the quest to purchase champagne that would both be affordable, but not taste gross. After wandering the bubbly aisle for quite some time at the liquor store, I was about to pick a very cheap kind of champagne (after all, it was just going to be mixed in--it's not like we'd be drinking it by itself), when a bottle with a light blue label caught my eye.

My thought process: "THEY MAKE MOSCATO SPARKLING WINE?!?!?!?!?! We are so buying this one!" (In September, we discovered moscato and it has been my favorite type of wine ever since) Another plus, the bottle cost less than $10. We had a winner.

Here was the delicious result:

1 tray of ice cubes
2 oz. white rum
4 cups of strawberries (!)
2 spoonfuls of sugar
1/2 bottle of champagne

Mix in a blender, and enjoy. :)

"Treatsa Pizza" or Grasshopper Pie

This is probably one of my favorite desserts ever. Seriously. It's the oreo cookie crust that gets me (I always save the crust for last!)

It was Erik's 23rd birthday yesterday, and this is what he chose for his birthday dessert. I gave him a choice between my Grandma B's chocolate cake and this ice cream dessert. I love both of the choices, but he'd never had this one before.

Here's the cupcake version of the dessert (I made a pie-sized dessert too, but there were some leftover ingredients, so I made mini pies/pizzas in a muffin pan).


Oreo cookie crust. Mint chocolate chip ice cream. Homemade fudge sauce.

Delicious.

3 for Valentine's, 3 for Birthdays

I've made a few cards recently, but waited to post them so that the post office could do it's thing and get these off to the recipients before I went and ruined the surprise on here. I've been following the blog Mojo Monday which posts sketches or templates of cards. I love them!!! I really like making cards, but I've always struggled a wee bit with coming up with things to do with the papers and layers and such. These are also some of the first cards where I've tried using ribbon successfully. :)

"Manly" version of a Valentine's Day card, for my sweetie

Valentine's Card (red edition)

Valentine's Card (pink edition)

For my uncle's 55th birthday

For my grandma's 80th birthday

For Kelsey's birthday

Yay for (so far) keeping with my goal of not purchasing greeting cards, but making them!

Valentine's Day

I think I got more excited for Valentine's Day when I was a little kid. You'd get to to go the store and pick out a box of little Valentine cards for all of your friends at school (favorites of mine included Powerpuff Girls, Star Wars, and Kittens), and of course some candy too (Sweethearts, anyone?). At school, you'd get to decorate a brown lunch bag which would become your desk's mailbox for candy and cards from your classmates. And no one was left out, because the rule was if you were going to bring Valentine cards or candy to school, you had to have enough for the whole class. It was always one of the best days of school, ever. I mean, who doesn't like less time for class and more time for candy and fun?

Now you just see a ton of commercials telling you to spend $60+ on long-stemmed roses (when you could just wait until summer and get 20 beautiful roses for $10 at the Farmer's Market), ridiculous jewelry that's supposed to look like it's hugging something, or having to pay an arm and a leg to go see the new romantic comedy at the movie theater. Oiy... I liked when things were simpler and only about $5 total cost for the day.

Well, given that my boyfriend and I like simple things, we're going to have a pretty laid-back day, which I am looking forward to very much.

Tentative Schedule:

• Heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast. Although, they turned out nothing like those in the photo. Mine were free-handed and ended up looking like asymmetrical blobs.
• A walk to the park (hopefully there are doggies in the dog park for us to watch!).
• Prepare the slow cooker for a tasty pork chop dinner.
• Go feed and play with Milo (a very poofy orange kitty).
• Pick up delicious cupcakes at the Cupcakery. (This is our one splurge for the day)
• Have delicious dinner, wine, and cupcakes!

Photo: http://www.more4kids.info/613/valentine-treats-for-kids/

Milk... doesn't always do a body good.

Last night I realized that we still had a lot of milk left to drink. Not wanting to drink it just for the sake of drinking milk, I thought that milk and oreos would be a tasty treat for dessert.

It's a good thing that I looked at the expiration date on the milk first (2/02/10). Being very disappointed that I could no longer have oreos and milk, I dumped out the expired milk. Erik noticed my mopey-ness about not getting to have oreos and very sweetly offered to go to the gas station across the street and buy me some more milk.

He got back, gave me the milk and I was very excited to have my dessert treat. But, the milk tasted a bit funny. Not having had milk out of a cardboard carton in a while, I thought that perhaps this was why it tasted different. Besides, I couldn't even taste the weirdness all that much when I just dunked the oreo in it.

This morning: I awoke much, much earlier than normal with a very upset stomach.

Morals of the story:

1. Don't trust gas station milk.
2. Don't continue to drink said milk after you decide it tastes funny.
3. Do go to a real grocery store to buy new milk when you realize yours is expired.
4. Give up on the idea of oreos and milk when you realize your milk is expired, because fate has already decided that for some reason you are meant to drink funky milk and get sick.

The end.

Photo: http://thedesouzafamily.blogspot.com/2008/01/oreos.html

Campfires

"The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter, and is about as ample at one season as at another. It is as well for cheerfulness as for warmth and dryness."
~Henry David Thoreau

As soon as I manage to get a tent, I'm going to plan a camping trip. Or maybe, as soon as I plan a camping trip, I'll get a tent. All I know is that Zion, Arches, Death Valley, and the Grand Canyon are all within a decent driving distance, and I want to go camping!

Football for Breakfast?

Living in the Pacific Standard Time zone after living in the Midwest my entire life has taken a little bit to get used to. I have to remember that I can't call my friends and family back home at night because they're probably asleep (and likewise, some of them need to remember to not call/text me in the morning, because it's much earlier here!) Evening TV shows and the news are on later at night. Facebook statuses of people from the East Coast/Midwest often contain spoilers for said shows that air later at night here.

And then there's football. Occasionally we are lucky enough here for the Vikings game to air on our local station. But rather than watching a noon (or afternoon) football game complete with soda (or beer) and chips, salsa, and other tasty snack food, given the time difference, we get to watch the Vikings game starting at 10:00 a.m.


So rather than those tasty, salty football snacks, we have cinnamon rolls and coffee. It's still yummy, but it feels odd.


Photo 1: http://www.buzzfeed.com/ries/snack-food-football-stadium-6y
Photo 2: http://stlmagblogs.typepad.com/feast/2010/01/coffee-and-a-pastry-atpi.html

Handmade Cards for the Holidays

This Christmas I told myself that I was not allowed to buy those super cute little boxes of cards at the store, but rather that I had to make all of my cards myself, or use leftover cards (from those cute little boxes) from years past. Well, partially because I had the urge to be crafty, and partially because I felt it was "too soon" to send out leftover cards from 1-3 years ago, I spent a few days making these. The ones above were my standard Christmas cards this season.


These two were crafted when I realized that my list of people was larger than the amount of cards I had made. So, I tried something new.


This one was for my mom's birthday, which is about a week before Christmas. She even recognized the green flower paper as wrapping paper that we used to have at the house. (There was only a little bit let, not nearly enough to wrap anything with, so I added it to my folder of pretty paper to be made into cards)


And then lastly, I made this one for a friend of the family who is getting married this week. I wanted to go with their color scheme, but had no idea what that was. I figured that blue is pretty standard, and it looks nice, so I went with it. (I have since learned that red/burgundy is the color in the wedding. I still think the blue is pretty though)

Not quite an ugly sweater, but close enough.

A few years back my residence hall had an ugly sweater holiday party. I could have easily found an ugly sweater at the "Salvo" (what UMMers call the local Salvation Army Thrift Store), but while shopping there I found this lovely piece of work. Since I was the Residence Hall Director, I figured I could get away with a hostess dress instead of a sweater (as well as those lovely red velvet pants to wear underneath!).


This year we don't have any ugly sweater parties to attend. Perhaps I'll have to organize one for next year. But I'm looking forward to the ugly-sweater-free festivities nevertheless.

I wish you all a very happy holiday season and safe travels!!

Holiday Goodies

One of my favorite ornaments.

A tasty cocoa treat.