Here’s my latest culinary experiment! My 15-year-old brother and I were charged with making birthday dinner for my mother. Being that she is probably the world’s biggest food critic, we had to pull all the stops for this one! We went with a spinach theme lol
First on the menu was a ‘salad’ dish - Penne with Radicchio and Goat Cheese. This is a pasta salad cooked with radicchio, baby spinach, parmesan cheese, garlic, and red pepper flakes. The mixture is cooked in a sauce made with chicken stock, balsamic vinegar, and lemon juice and when it is served, it’s topped with goat cheese crumbles and fresh basil leaves. At first I thought it sounded kind of gross…but it was AMAZING!
Our main side dish was Baked Asparagus Wrapped in Prosciutto. I’m not a huge asparagus fan but I did try it. It wasn’t too bad. Cooking the dish is rather simple. You season the asparagus and bake it in the oven. When it’s cooled off, you wrap the asparagus carefully in thin sheets of prosciutto and then serve at room temp.
Our main dish was the most difficult - Pork Chops Stuffed with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Spinach. The filling is made of garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach, thyme, goat cheese, and reduced-fat cream cheese. After stuffing the raw meat with the mixture, you have to cook them in a hot pan on the stove. Our pork chops were so thick this was rather tedious :-P Once they’re ready to go, all that’s left is the Lemon and Dijon Sauce to top the pork chops. This was made by cooking chicken broth, zested lemon, lemon juice and dijon mustard in your used skillet. We topped off each plate with a bit of this sauce and the result was crazy tasty stuffed pork chops!
- May 21
- , 2012
So I just read an article which was basically arguing that choirs (children, high school, collegiate, professional) should not specialize in one type of singing. To be successful and ‘with the times’, ALL choirs should embrace ALL singing styles, mixing classical, jazz, pop, spirituals, R&B, broadway etc. AND featuring them in a single concert. The article even suggested tips on how to do this without injuring your singers. To summarize…sing Monteverdi earlier in the concert because once your singers bring out the spirituals, broadway numbers and show choir tunes/dance numbers they’ll be too fatigued and strained to sing anything so light and delicate…
Don’t get me wrong! Certainly a choir concert without varied and contrasting repertoire would be a total drag! I’m all for mixing a few different genres in one concert. However, we need to give these groups that specialize in a certain kind of singing a little more credit. There are countless groups that stick to one genre, style, time period, or technique, and they’re great at what they do! Certain choirs were purposefully built to sing certain repertoire and that’s ok!
I don’t want to hear The Sixteen sing Mahler 2…..and good luck with ‘Water Night’ Metropolitan Opera Chorus.
- May 19
- , 2012
Here’s my latest culinary experiment - Penne and Shrimp with an Herbed Cream Sauce. Got this recipe from the fabulous Giada de Laurentiis and it turned out to be a huge success!
The sauce is made up of fresh herbs (first time using herbs from my “garden”! lol), garlic, red pepper flakes, heavy whipping cream, white wine, clam juice and diced tomatoes. Add some cooked shrimp, penne pasta, parmesan cheese and some salt and pepper to taste and you’ve got yourself dinner.
My adjustments — My boyfriend loves spicy things so I definitely was pretty generous with the red pepper flakes. For the white wine, I used a vey dry Californian Pinot Grigio (which I also chilled later and drank with the meal!). I substituted the clam juice with chicken broth….cuz well….clam juice sounds kind of gross lol. I also definitely went overboard with the parmesan cheese and chopped sweet basil, but did not regret those decisions!
Overall, this one was a huge success. YUM!
Introducing my two new guinea pig babies :) Meant to post this a while ago, but here they are! Iggy and I decided to get these two 3-month old girls. They’ve been the sweetest ever!
Their names are……wait for it…..Cuddles and Puddles haha We were hoping to come up with some crazy awesome names and were just calling them that as a joke…..well it stuck. haha oh well!
- April 15
- , 2012
So I’m actually a closet kitchen-aholic….I discovered since I moved out that I LOVE TO COOK! Decided I should really start to share my concoctions online.
My latest attempt was this Ultimate Roasted Chicken recipe my mom got from food network. Gave me a chance to use the roasting pan I got for Christmas (yup…freak!! haha). It’s a very tasty and VERY CHEAP meal. The chicken itself cost less than $4.
After gutting/cleaning the chicken (yucky part :-P), you lather the chicken in herbs and spices! I also stuffed the chicken with clumps of fresh parsley, thyme and oregano and then some chunks of onion, garlic and orange. Before throwing it into the oven, you tie up the legs with cooking twine and place 6 uncooked strips of bacon on top of the chicken. The chicken takes about 50 minutes to roast in the oven, all of the juices from the stuffing seeping from the inside out!
Once the chicken is done you can display the finished product and then mix the leftover juices with some flour, chicken broth and dry sherry to create a tasty sauce! The apartment smelled amazing and the chicken tasted ridiculous!! Success!
- April 15
- , 2012
Been charged with decorating the Choir and Bell Choir rooms at my church job…it’s been an interesting project! Love how this accent wall and artwork turned out in the bell room. We’ve got a really cool tree theme going!
- March 10
- , 2012
