Vanilla, Pear and Fig Jam

I had one last batch of fresh figs to use so I made another batch of jam. I walked around the grocery store with a bunch of different types of fruit but nothing caught my eye until I saw the crimson red pears and knew they were meant to be together.



My recipe was basically the same as the one for my rhubarb and fig jam except I had only 13 cups of fruit rather than the 16 cups I had before. I just followed the directions loosely again from pomona pectin and when the jam was almost done I added to big gluggs of vanilla to the pot and stirred. I tasted a couple of times to see what level of vanilla I wanted. Not to perfumey but enough to add another layer to the flavor.

My favorite way to eat this is over some vanilla bean ice cream. Yum.

Laguiole Knives

An oldie but a goodie! I'm crushing hard on these Laguiole knives. One of our favorite french restaurants has a giant stock in these knives. I've had everything from the pearl, stainless steel and neon. J'adore Laguiole!

Food Porn - Pan Fried Duck

I love cooking and for me it is like a mental yoga. When the day has been bad or things aren't going the way I planned I can go to the kitchen and cook. Very rarely do things turn out bad. Somethings not as planned but not bad. Recently, Leslie, had posted about an asparagus salad that they had created the recipe via video. This led me to start reading Kinfolk Journal. Which is like the playboy of food journals. It's an amazing website and magazine that documents amazing food and the people that make it. I instantly knew that I need to make this recipe.

I took one measly little photo on my iphone. I was really too hungry to try and photograph it well and to be honest the video is amazing. Why try to recreate it!

Diner en Blanc

Say what? Diner en Blanc was a night in Paris where 10,000 people all dressed in white and brought their own picnic to the Louvre and Notre Dame.


via flickr

How amazing would this be? The most amazing part is it was all started by spreading word by word of mouth. Everyone was a friend of someone.

Dinner with Friends

Last night, we dressed up and drove to downtown LA to go to Cirque Bezerk, a twisted circus. A pretty long winded story but basically I had a coupon for 50% off 4 tickets and when we got to the box office they refused to take it. The box office was owned by Club Nokia and opperated by Ticketmaster. I thought it was BS and I requested to speak to a manager from the show and we got frustrated and decided to go to dinner instead (which was what we were going to do after getting tickets anyways!).

So we walked for about 10 minutes to this little wine bar, CorkBar.


view of the bar

The girls got a bottle of wine and the boys got a bottle and we shared a three cheese's and three charcuterie's plate. As well as these little cheese puffs that were something like "cheddar gogugeres". I referred to them as cheddar boogers. Not because they tasted like booger but because I couldn't pronounce the fancy french gogugeres.


cheddar boogers

Then we all had our own main entree. I did a rootbeer braised beef short ribs over polenta, Jack had pan seared scallops over bacon spinach and turnip puree, and the other couple had hangar steak over risotto.


We didn't have the top picture which I believe is the pork tenderloin. Left is the scallops and right is the hangar steak.

Then to complete it off we had a chocolate board with about six small truffles and a brioche cupcake with caramel and bacon.


cinnamon brioche cupcake with bacon and caramel

It was pure gluttony but man was the food amazing. It's also really nice when you like to go to nice restaurants and you find another couple who's compatible and get down with that. Also, downtown LA is turning around and becoming quite the night spot with lots of fun restaurants and bars. Wish we had a metro that we could take its a little too far for a cab and driving after drinking is never a real good idea.

*all of the pictures are from a random google search of corkbar

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

MUTANT STRAWBERRIES ARE TAKING OVER THE WORLD...

or just my cereal bowl. This weekend strawberries were on sale and Jack pointed out that we got a mutant strawberry in our box. I of course declared that it would be mine ( yeah I've got a case of the youngest child persona). This morning I got the mutant strawberry in my cereal bowl. We figured that it probably would have been at least 3-4 normal strawberries if it hadn't mutated. It was pretty delicious in all its mutated glory.
narm narm narm

Run, dont' walk...

to your nearest Trader Joes. I've found the most amazing snack. Freeze Dried Blueberries or Strawberries. They come in at around $3 a bag and make for the most excellent crunchy sweet snack. I've been looking online for a pic but can't find one!

Berries are hella expensive. Hello, $11 for a pack of 3 raspberries this weekend but these are affordable and last a lot longer! In the bag you get an insane amount of fruit. It will tell you but almost like a 1/2 pound before freeze drying. I ended up taking these to the movie theater on Friday and they solved my munchies. Also, if you don't have a TJ's near by you can get the "Just Veggies" brand of freeze dried fruits/vegetables but they are nearly double the cost. Le Sigh. I've been looking on Amazon to see if I can buy them in bulk to save some $$. Also, some info on dried vs. fresh berries here. Just make sure when you're buying these that you look at the back and make sure no added sugar is involved and you're good to go!

Cheers-

Raech

Best Investments of 2009

Ok. I know that January is almost over and I'm still talking about 2009 but today as I was washing stuff to be put in the dishwasher I glanced at my rice maker that was dirty from dinner last night. I thought in my head " oh rice maker you've made my life so different". Then I realized that I should really blog about my favorite investments of 2009.

First up, is my little 3 cup rice cooker. Before this I was making rubbery/crunchy/failed rice. I could never figure out what I was doing wrong. You boil water, add rice/oil, cook until done. What could go wrong? I think its the steaming that you get with a rice cooker that turns out perfectly steamed yummy rice everytime.



I picked up this one at CVS for $15. It literally has saved me from throwing away tons of batches of ruined rice. I :heart: you rice maker ( and so does the doggies..b'c now they get yummy brown rice added to their kibbies)

Next is my espresso machine. I know you're probably like "enough already! we are soo sick of hearing about your espresso machine!" but truth be told every morning when I walk in the kitchen I am so happy to see my little machine ready to use.



This bad boy I picked up for around $100 with tax and a 20% off coupon at Bed Bath and Beyond. The stupid part was I had to buy a milk frothing pitcher and a little stamper to push the grounds down. Why not just include those and sell the coffee maker for $110?

I'm looking for some tools that I can add to my kitchen for 2010. So far we bought an electric knife.


Its awesome for slicing homemade bread into normal slices instead of having big old hunks of bread ( which are good but makes the bread go away sooo fast!!) .

One of our big Christmas presents was a kitchen aid food processor.

Which I adore. This weekend I made 2 large batches of homemade soup base ( A potato soup and a broccoli soup) and was able to get 8 pints ( i think..they're about 2 cups worth of soup each). The basic recipe I use involved boiling the veggies and then processing it until its smooth and adding about 1-2c of chunked boiled veggies. At this part I can can them and when we are ready to eat them take them out and thin them with a little bit of milk and cheese. I was really frustrated after going to the grocery store and looking for some canned soups to have on hand and they were $2.50 and up for 2 people. I knew I could make something with way less sodium and tastes better! My other project this weekend was buying a few blocks of cheese and shredding them in the processor. Now I have shredded mozzarella, colby cheese, and cheddar.

Anything else that I should add to my kitchen repertoire?

Cheers-

Raech

Raspberry

Went to the farmers market by my work and had a homeade pinneapple tamale and a pint of raspberries. Luckily, I remebered to take a photograph of these before I ate them all! they were soooooooooo good. It fees like summer on this toasty 80 degree day.