Ornament Swap 2010 - Assigned

Hi All-

You should all have your ornament swap info by now! If you don't please let me know and I will get you signed up with someone right away. I apologize again for it being so delayed but I was laid up all weekend recouping from the evil cold/flu that is going around my work! So I'll leave you with this pretty Louis Vuitton for Portugese Elle photo

Via we heart it

Last Chance for the Ornament Swap!!

Please make sure to email me your info for the ornament swap if you'd like to join! Today is our cut off!!

Deets are here but otherwise just send me the following at jackandtill@gmail.com

Your Name
Your Address
Your holiday scheme if you choose otherwise I'll let your swapee to choose something special!!

Cheers-

Raechel

Roasted Pepper Macaroni

Ever since I started working again I have felt really adverse to cooking. I always think about making wonderful yummy recipes but when it comes down to it I'm too tired and lack much extra time. This weekend, we spent all day home on Saturday and I got a cooking bug. We had the cinnamon apple cornmeal waffles from here for breakfast and for a late lunch we had roasted pepper macaroni and seafood sausages. Man oh man do I love macaroni and cheese but its really unhealthy for you! I wish I could take credit for this recipe but a friend made it for me and I've been hooked ever since! I don't have a specific recipe but I follow a loose guidelines of this:

Roasted Pepper Macaroni

• 2 peppers ( yellow, red, orange) cut into slices
  
• 3-4 cloves of big garlic cut in half or quarters
• Olive Oil
• Walnuts/Pecans (1/4-1/2 cup)
  
• Parmesan Cheese (1/4 cup)
  
• 2-3 cups of Farfalle / Rotini

On a baking sheet covered in foil place the peppers and garlic cloves and drizzle with olive oil.
Peppers waiting to be roasted!
Roast at 350 for 10-20 minutes. This part is tricky as I'm not a fan of the roasted aka burnt peppers so I roast mine until they are soft and light brown but you can go the whole way and dark roast them. Take out of the oven and let cool a bit, otherwise I seem to have problems with my chopper not sealing but if you don't go ahead and go to the next step. I reserve the oil from the baking and put into my chopper in the next step but you can throw it away but why!? its Roasted pepper and garlic olive oil yum.

Place the peppers and garlic in a blender, chopper, etc... with a handful of nuts (from whichever you have chosen), drizzle a bit more olive oil and Parmesan cheese.

Blended pepper concotion
Blend until smooth ( usually a few minutes) and voila you have roasted pepper sauce. While the peppers are roasting I will start the pasta and they usually end up being done at the same time. I combine the sauce with the pasta. I had enough for 2-3 cups of pasta and than I saved about 1 cup of sauce for pizza/dipping.


L-R and starting at noon - roasted pepper mac, steamed snap peas with salt, pan fried seafood sausages from Trader Joes ( shrimp, crab, red peppers, cilantro yumminess!!)

Also, don't forget to get your names and addresses if you're interested in doing the ornament swap! Deets here

Cinnamon Apple Cornmeal Waffles

This morning we made breakfast at home. Sometimes we go out but we're trying to continue to save and work towards a healthier spending vs saving ratio. We went out last night for sushi so breakfast in it was. While laying in bed and discussing what to make I suddenly got a craving for cinnamon apple waffles. One of my favorite quick tricks is to use a box of Jiffy Corn bread mix for waffles. It gives you a crispy but slightly salty sweet dough. Its the only way I really like waffles now. First, I chopped up two small apples. I chopped 1/2 of one of the apples into small pieces and mixed those in with the batter.

The rest I put in a small saute pan with some butter and olive oil ( for some reason this is a good combo for sauteing/browning fruit) along with some cinnamon and brown sugar.
They smell fantastic while cooking and tasted equally as good! The only advice I'd offer is that the apples make the batter a little bit wetter. To remedy this you could cut back on the liquid a bit or leave the apples out of the batter. We cooked a few eggs to go with the waffles. I like sunny side up with the runny yokes and surprisingly a little bit of yoke with the waffles was really good combination.
We put on a Regina Spektor and Ray LaMontagne record while eating breakfast and sipped on giant mugs of hot coffee.

Today, I wish....

I was at a street cafe in Paris having an espresso and a pain au raisin. Even the fast food restaurants have excellent pastries.

Incase you haven't already! Please sign up for the Ornament swap 2010!! Read about the details here or you can email me if you have questions at jackandtill@gmail.com.

Ornament Swap 2010

I was going through my emails and I found one from Anthroplogie and they were taunting me with all of the fun ornaments for the upcoming holidays and I thought " hey why don't I host an ornament swap?"


So I'm hoping to get this going! The cut off for sign up will be Wednesday, November 24th at midnight. We will randomly assign people and lets send out the ornaments by December 3rd to allow for ample shipping time. The price limit is $15 but the ornament can be handmade/crafted.

Please email me jackandtill@gmail.com with the following:

Your Name
Your Address
If you have a specific theme going - (ie..my tree is gold, bronze, and glittery) or if you want someone to pick something on a whim!

Only 43 more days to go till Santa Claus brings us lots of goodies!

We're back!

After traveling for almost 24 hrs! (15 hours of flight plus layovers and time changes!) We are finally back in Sunny LA. The trip was simply amazing. I fell deeply in love with Paris. Je T'aime Paris!!

We had such a great time and once I go through all my photo's I will blog some more but here's a few for now!

Jack and I in front of Notre Dame. It's breathtaking once you realize thousands of people have walked thru this amazing church. Its very beautiful inside. The amazing rose windows, the flying butresses that hold up the large stone ceiling. Simply breathtaking.Eating a crepe on the last day we were in Paris. I loved ordering Un Jambon et fromage crepe. I had this maybe 5 out of the 8 days we were in Paris. Otherwise, I'd order Un crepe avec abricots. Paris has amazingly delicious food and pretty inexpensive ( 3.50euro) for a meat/cheese crepe.

Well lots of unpacking and sorting to do now!

Au Revoir-

Raechel