Week 30: Infused alcohol

Prior to this week, I’d never cut a pineapple. Others have done it for me and I’ve eaten pre-cut pineapple, but I never got my hands dirty while doing so. It scared me.

This week, I rolled up my sleeves and got down to business. Silly me, I didn’t even realized pineapples had seeds under their spiny skin! Fun fact for the day.

Once I had several pineapple spears, I cut them down farther and set out to infuse my own tequila. Yes, I started making pineapple tequila!

Infusing alcohol is pretty easy. Especially since luck would have me randomly purchasing small mason jars just the day before. In my quest to come up with something new, I browsed many crafty blogs and found a recipe for grapefruit vodka from Not Martha. Won over by this simple idea, I knew I could kill two birds with one stone and a.) cut my very first pineapple and b.) infuse my very first jar of alcohol!

All I did was fill the jar with pineapple spears and then topped off with lots of tequila (tequila and I aren’t really friends anyways, so why not make it taste better?). Note: When infusing alcohol, make sure to use the best quality you’ve got on hand. The fruit is only going to give it a hint of flavor, it’s not overpowering. In my case, the bf would have FLIPPED if I used all of our Patrón, so instead I went with a mélange of our remaining José Cuervo and then topped it off with Patrón ;)

As a tip for mild-flavored fruits (such as pineapple), most recipes I browsed said to leave the pineapple in the alcohol for up to two weeks. Then when ready, strain the liquid and use to your tastes.

After two days, I couldn’t wait to try it. I was so excited. So as soon as I woke up the second day, I took a spoon to my jar and tasted. What a horrendous idea that was. Even though it smelled like pineapple, it straight up tasted like tequila. I almost spat it out. Clearly it needed more time!

So four days later, I wanted to test it out in a beverage. My remaining pineapple was close to the end of its life and I honestly couldn’t wait any longer. So that pineapple tequila turned into this:

Yes, that’s a piña colada margarita! No I didn't have any mini drink umbrellas. Leave me alone for a few seconds while I pout.

Although it ended up being a lot more watery than I would have liked, the margarita tasted pretty darn delicious. And now that my curiosities have been satisfied, I still have 4/5 of the jar left to soak up more pineapple flavor. Then I can really enjoy it next week (though, who really enjoys tequila anyways?!).

Piña Colada Margarita

• 2 shots (4 oz) pineapple infused tequila
• 1/2 c fresh pineapple
• 1/2 c coconut milk
• ice to thicken up
• salt to rim the glass

Enjoy the warm weather this weekend!

Mint Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

Yes, you read that right.

No, it wasn’t my birthday… but it should have been.

I freakin’ LOVE mint chocolate chip ice cream. And it’s got to be the green kind, not the cop out white minty variety (you can tell I’ve had a lot of experience eating mint chip ice cream before). In fact, if it weren’t for the holiday peppermint candy cane ice cream, mint chip would be the very top of my list. Thank God that stuff can only be found two-to-three months out of the year.

But I digress… let’s get back to my obsession with mint chocolate chip!

For the past week or so, I searched and searched for a decent cupcake recipe. After the success I had tweaking base recipes with peanut butter and lemon cakes, the mint thing couldn’t be that hard, could it?

Yes it could. The major problem I encountered with every recipe was that they were all chocolate-based cakes with mint flavoring and green mint frosting.

What I really wanted was green cupcakes that looked exactly like little scoops of ice cream. So I took matters into my own hands:

You’re lying to yourself if you don’t think those look like ice cream cups :)

Eventually I found a base for mint cupcakes (from the Sprinkles cupcake bakery!) and added my own touch.

I present to you:

Mint Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Fudgy Chocolate Frosting

(yields 14 cupcakes)

1 1/2 c all-purpose flour, sifted

1 t baking powder

1/4 t salt

1/2 c skim milk

1 1/2 t peppermint extract

1/2 t vanilla extract

1/2 c (1 stick) butter

1 c sugar

1 large egg

2 large egg whites

1 1/2 mini chocolate chips

green food coloring

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with cupcake liners; set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt; set aside. In a small bowl, mix together milk and extracts; set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter on medium-high speed, until light and fluffy. Gradually add sugar and continue to beat until well combined and fluffy. Reduce the mixer speed to medium and slowly add egg and egg whites until just blended.
With the mixer on low, slowly add half the flour mixture; mix until just blended. Add the milk mixture and food coloring; mix until just blended. Slowly add remaining flour mixture, scraping down sides of the bowl with a spatula, as necessary, until just blended. Finally, by hand, fold in chocolate chips.

Divide batter evenly among prepared muffin cups. Transfer muffin tin to oven and bake until tops are just dry to the touch, 22 to 25 minutes. Transfer muffin tin to a wire rack and let cupcakes cool completely in tin before icing.

For the frosting:

• 3 c powdered sugar
• 2/3 c cocoa
• 1/2 c butter
• 1 t vanilla
• 1/3 c milk

Sift together powdered sugar and cocoa. Melt butter. Add butter and vanilla to sifted mixture. Stir. Add milk to get desired spreading consistency. If more milk is required, add by tablespoon at a time. Can store up to 3 months in the freezer.

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There you have it! Mint chocolate chip cupcakes that taste EXACTLY like the ice cream – only better because they didn’t melt. Not like I’d let them sit around long enough to melt, please!

Other than that, I really can’t tell you how freakin’ good these were. You’re just going to have to make them yourselves :)

Just send me some in the mail… I “gave some of mine to friends and coworkers” and ate the other half of the batch myself in less than a week.

(P.S., I didn’t realize at the time, but I accidentally bought gluten free graham flour instead of whole wheat flour. So, there, these just so happen to be gluten free cupcakes too. And they still came out exactly like I’d hoped!)

30 Books You Should Read Before 30

Before I get into it, I'm going to let you in on a little secret.

I'm in a slump. My "new things" are coming to a slow crawl. I feel like most of the things I've got left involve cooking or baking. While I knew my financial resources would be limited this year, this certainly wasn't what I had in mind!

Now that's out there, does anyone have any suggestions of things I could do that sound fun and interesting for the remaining five months this year? The cheaper, the better!

What I've got on my list:

• go to a shooting range
• donate blood (so scared, I always pass out even when I get my cholesterol tested)
• buy something from a vintage shop
• read Anne Frank's diary
• make something crafty?
• vlog (I don't actually have a camera... so that may be difficult ha)
• try a hookah lounge

Like I said, it's my mid-year slump! Any non-cooking ideas would be much, much appreciated :)

Now on to the 30 before 30 list! (Maybe making some headway on this could be one of my goals?) I've got 4 years to go... think I can tackle it?

1. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
2. 1984 by George Orwell
3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
4. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
5. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
6. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
7. The Rights of Man by Tom Paine
8. The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
9. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
10. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
11. The Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton
12. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
13. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
14. The Art of War by Sun Tzu
15. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
16. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
17. Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot
18. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
19. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
20. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
21. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
22. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
23. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
24. The Republic by Plato
25. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
26. Getting Things Done by David Allen
27. How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
28. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
29. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
30. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Bolded are the books which I have read in my 26 years of life... what a short list! If you want the full, gory details about the books I've read, check out my Goodreads profile!

(Need more? How about 100 books you should have read by college: I've made a major dent in this list! Thank my English and French literature degrees for that one.)

Week 29: Home made chocolate cranberry & toasted coconut granola

Every week in 2011, for 52-straight weeks, I hope to try something new and blog about it here. This is the 29th post in the series, when I finally made my own granola at home. Here you can find a list of all my weekly adventures thus far.

I’ve always loved granola. Especially when it’s incorporated into trail mixes with nuts, fruit and chocolate. But mostly chocolate.

One of my best friends from home always makes granola, and she makes it look so easy! When I visited her at UCLA one summer I was still at UC Santa Barbara, she made honey nut granola and we ate it like there was no tomorrow.

Since then, I’ve been telling myself I’ve always wanted to make granola. But, something about it scared me. And I have no idea why, because it’s one of the easier things a person could possibly make.

Chocolate, Cranberry & Toasted Coconut Granola

Adapted from Blog Critics

• 4 c rolled oats
• 3 T cocoa powder
• 1/2 c dried cranberries
• 1/4 c coconut flakes
• 1/4 c white chocolate chips
• 1/2 c chopped nuts
• 1/3 c honey
• 3 T maple syrup
• 1/2 c almond oil
• 1 t cinnamon
• 1/2 t ginger
• 1/4 t salt

Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Stir all ingredients together in a bowl. Combine until oats are totally coated. Spread in a thin layer on a parchment covered cookie sheet. Bake for 45 minutes or until a spoonful left to cool to room temperature is crunchy. Stir every 15 minutes for evenly cooked granola or leave unstirred for chunkier granola.

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Although I’ve been semi bed-ridden today, all I could think about was a bowl of this granola. For breakfast I dished out a bowl of plain Greek yogurt, sliced up strawberries and included a generous heaping of granola. I may have also grabbed a few handfuls to snack on.

So there you have it! Beautiful, chocolatey granola with a healthy serving of fruits and nuts. The cocoa powder is sort of subtle, it’s not overly chocolatey, but every now and then you get a bite of a white chocolate chip and it adds another layer of chocolate! If you’re crazy like I am, you could also throw in mini chocolate morsels prior to baking. Let’s be gourmet and call it triple chocolate granola then, instead of exposing it for the sugar overload it really is…

But come on, do you blame me?! I mean, I have been bed-ridden after all :)

Besides, I have grand ideas for this granola!

Garlic Fries, a little taste of SF

Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’ve been to the City many, many times in my life. Even last year when I lived a several hours east of SF at my old job, J.D. and I still made a few trips out to San Francisco.

We played tourists for the Valentine’s Day weekend, doing all the things I’d never done before because I felt too “local” for them. You know, like going to Alcatraz.

 

 

We went to a wine and chocolate tasting boutique, on another occasion paired wine and cupcakes at American Cupcake (!!!) and ate seafood until we turned into seals or something.

But I’m pretty sure all of that pales in comparison to the Gordon Biersch garlic fries we always get on the pier and at Giants or A’s games! (Did I really just say that?!)

If you’ve never had garlic fries… you’re missing out! They are so wonderfully crispy and garlicy and amazing. Even if it comes at the expense of fresh breath. Learn how they came to the United States and started at Gordon Biersch, here.

Well if you haven’t yet tried them, you now have zero excuses, because I finally made them at home myself! And we didn’t even get all intense with cutting our own potatoes, we used freezer fries and baked them, then made garlic magic.

San Franciscan Garlic Fries

• 1/2 package frozen French fries
• 5 t minced garlic
• 2 t chopped parsley
• 2 T olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Bake the French fries (I’m sure this could be amazing with sweet potato fries too), according to package directions and while they are still warm, toss in a bowl with all remaining ingredients. Do not let the fries cool after cooking, otherwise the ingredients won’t stick. We decided to kick it up a notch and add in 1 T garlic salt and pepper for taste.

While these weren’t as breath-killingly garlic as the fries I’m used to, the taste still brought me back to snacking on the piers or hanging out in the bleachers at Bay Area baseball games! It’s a little bite of home, from deep in the desert where temperatures are currently 109 degrees and rising.

So what did we pair those glories fries with?! Home made Italian meatball subs… but that’s a story for another time.

Week 28: Attend a professional All-Star Game

Every week in 2011, for 52-straight weeks, I hope to try something new and blog about it here. This is the 28th post in the series, when I attended my first All-Star Game. Here you can find a list of all my weekly adventures thus far.

As an avid sports fan – baseball especially – two of my nerdiest dreams are to visit every ballpark and attend an All-Star Game.

Thus far I’ve been to the Oakland A’s, San Francisco Giants, Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles Angels… of Anaheim, Arizona Diamondbacks, Texas Rangers, Kansas City Royals, Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sox and New York Mets stadiums. Ten is a far cry from all 30 ;)

But last week I was finally able to catch the MLB All-Star FanFest, Futures Game, Celebrity Softball Game, Home Run Derby and of course the actual All-Star Game here in Phoenix. I put in close to a 60-hour week when all was said and done! But it was soooooo awesome. I’m so glad I was able to enjoy it while working, but I’m also glad it’s behind us. I’ve been desperately trying to catch up on sleep and decent eating habits since then, but somehow failing significantly.

Once the team hits the road next week, I’m guessing things will get back to normal for me… two weeks before grad school starts.

Since I am exhausted and starving, I’ll leave you with pictures from last week!

FanFest

Futures/Celebrity Softball Games

Home Run Derby

All-Star Game

Oh yeah… and the Cee-lo Green concert they threw :) He was awesome. So much so, I purchased his album.

(The quality wasn’t all that great, but I was close!)

Did you watch the game?! :)

French Friday: Crustless Quiche

I’ve been a terrible Frenchie lately. I mean, yesterday was Bastille Day (the equivalent of Independence Day here in the U.S., just, a celebration of royal heads rolling through the streets of Paris…) and I drank GERMAN wine with dinner.

I haven’t even been watching much of the Tour de France… but I did root for France in the Women’s World Cup semi-final match against the United States. And I did make kir a few weeks ago. Oh yeah, and I made a quiche.

So at least I’ve got something going for me with regards to my Frenchness.

Crustless Shrimp, Spinach & Asparagus Quiche

Ingredients:

• 1/2 small onion, finely chopped
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 10-15 asparagus spears
• 2 c spinach, rough chopped
• 2 T cilantro, finely chopped
• 1/2  T rosemary, finely chopped
• 4 large eggs
• 4 large egg whites
• 2 T milk
• 1/2 c parmesan cheese , shredded
• 8 T sour cream (I used plain Greek yogurt again)
• 1 large tomato, chopped
• 6 oz shrimp , cooked
• salt and pepper

Directions:

Heat oven to 350. Spray pie plate with cooking spray.

Heat skillet over medium heat with oil. Saute onion and asparagus and 5 – 8 minutes until tender. Whip eggs and milk in mixing bowl.

Layer onion, asparagus, shrimp, parsley, thyme, spinach and cheese in pie plate. Pour egg mixture over the top, pressing the spinach down into the egg mixture. Bake at 350 for 20 – 30 minutes until set.

Top with chopped tomatoes and Greek yogurt for each serving.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of full-fat creams, cheeses and buttery crusts. On special occasions, generally, but not in my daily cooking.

So this was perfect! It was super easy, didn’t require an intricate crust and is fairly healthy. I ate it everyday for almost a week and never got bored of my quiche.

Oh and I even consumed a bottle of red, FRENCH wine with each of my quichey meals. Take that, German Gewürztraminer!

Since I’m not intimidated by quiche-making, you shouldn’t be either! This is a very simple French meal anyone can make at home. Might as well make it and catch the final eight stages of the Tour de France (aired on tape delay on Versus). My favorite scene is always the cyclists pushing through the final stage on the Champs-Élysées:

Bon appétit!

Week 27: Spend money on myself

Every week in 2011, for 52-straight weeks, I hope to try something new and blog about it here. This is the 27th post in the series, when I finally bought nice makeup and learned how to use it. Here you can find a list of all my weekly adventures thus far.

I have been insanely busy over the past week and a half with work. Things will finally slow down later next week, but until then I’m only going to post once this week. I’ll give you a hint at the end of this entry with the major event that’s been taking over my life :)

So let’s get into this week’s new thing. For the longest time I’ve wanted to buy MAC makeup. Everyone I know uses and loves it! I’ve only really ever bought makeup at Target/Wal-Mart, and I haven’t really been spending much time on myself in the morning. Usually I’ll take a shower at night, straighten my hair in the morning, throw on a little bit of makeup and then I’m out the door.

Originally I had every intention of buying some MAC this year… but it’s still a bit out of my price range (I have been searching for full-time employment for when my D-backs job finishes up in October). In lieu of MAC, I made my first trip to our local Sephora earlier this week and browsed.

For the first time in my life, really, I caved and bought nice makeup! And I’ve discovered a new way to use it.

First I’ll show you the goods, then the tutorial video will follow.

I needed a new liquid eyeliner and decided to go with the glittery black. I’ve never used an eyeliner on my lower lid before, so I bought a black smudge pencil. As inspiration from the tutorial video (which I will post below), I decided to also buy my first-ever eyeshadow palette. You’ll see why in a bit. Last but not least, some glittery bronzer. Sensing a theme here?

I’ve only had this palette for two days, but I’m already in love! It’s weird how since buying it, I’m totally motivated to spend a few extra minutes on myself each morning. It’s even inspired me to open up my lipgloss box for the first time in months, if not a year.

So what could possibly have sparked this desire to finally spend money on some nice makeup?!

…Would you be surprised if I said Katy Perry?! haha, didn’t think so.

One of my favorite things about Katy Perry is her sense of style. She totally reminds me of a pin-up model from the 40s/50s. And this is one of my favorite music videos of her. Is it just me, or does it remind anyone else of The Notebook? I’m pretty sure that was the goal here.

Here is the tutorial I found on how to achieve Katy Perry’s look from the music video Thinking of You:

And now I leave you with a hint as to why I’ve been so busy this week…

See you all next week!