Tag: spring

Weekend Things

Lauren3 Comments

Viva la weekend!

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Friday night blood orange margaritas never tasted so good.  Clearly.

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Turns out our “herb chopper” is actually for making crinkle fries.  Hell yeah!  Also, this corn & zucchini pie is insanely good for being so dang easy to make.

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Thinking about writing a whole post on how to make this toast.  Is this real life?  Also, Saturday morning iced coffee is what happiness is made of.

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Oh just mixing up some concrete on a beautiful 80° day.  Consider our hammock posts officially set.  So winter can just be over now.

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Just Joey and the three Ladies Dorsey.  Burgers all around!  And just a small basket of fries, cheese and bacon.

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How genius are ice cream flights?  You’re saying I get to try FIVE DIFFERENT ICE CREAM FLAVORS?  Okay!  But… ice cream flight: yes, this actual ice cream: no.  A good rule of thumb for ice cream shops is “if there’s no chocolate chip cookie dough on the menu, just leave.”

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I’m on a serious Pancake Sunday roll.  Whipped these lemon poppy seeds up when I was done taking a video of Joey snoring in bed.  He didn’t think it was as funny as I did.

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Sunday: beer brewing + binge-watching Girls.  Season 4 > Season 3.  Starting to realize no matter how much I like or don’t like this show, I always come back for Adam.  He just always keeps you guessing, doesn’t he?

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Ended Sunday with Shameless — we just discovered SHO Anytime on Apple TV, which means no more watching on our laptop with the sound all the way up and still not being able to hear — and my favorite meal that we make.  It’s this and this and they taste best together and at the beginning of spring.

Happy Monday!

On Recipe Testing

Lauren4 Comments

Did you know Recipe Tester is an actual job?  I mean, it makes sense.  Someone has to try out all the recipes that end up getting published in cookbooks and magazines, but I guess it’d never really crossed my mind.  That is, until a local magazine I follow on Twitter, tweeted out a link for a cookbook writer looking for volunteer recipe testers.  Sign me up!

Now that I’ve been chosen, cooked my three assigned recipes and turned in all my evaluation forms, I thought I’d share some more about the experience.  And pay attention because after spending a good amount of money on the ingredients and only liking one out of the three recipes, it’s probably safe to say my recipe testing career is over.

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This was Recipe #1, a seafood-stuffed baked phyllo packet.  And then it was topped with a whole grain mustard sauce… yes!  I made this on a Sunday, thinking it would be the most time consuming, but this ended up being the quickest of the bunch.  Also, it was delicious.  Sadly, shrimp and crabmeat are kind of expensive and this will probably be the only time we ever make this dish.  Wah, wah.

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Recipe #2: A smoked turkey, hearts of palm and mushroom salad that was all over the place.  First of all, it served EIGHT and who needs to make eight servings of anything??  Also I thought it was going to be more like chicken or tuna salad consistency but it turns out smoked turkey is more like chunks of ham, aka pretty dense.  The whole things was just weird.  Not to mention that part where one can of hearts of palm is $5 and I needed three of them.  I think Joey ate a majority of this one 🙂

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Last recipe was a cheese grits soufflé, which sounds pretty fun, but was so bland it hurt.  I should’ve known right away when there was NO SALT in the recipe, but part of being a recipe tester means you have to follow the recipe exactly as written.  Also, this took two hours to make between prepping the ingredients and actually baking the soufflé.  Luckily, we made it on a Saturday, otherwise I think dinner would’ve ran straight into bedtime.  That kale salad, though!

So all in all, the whole experience ended up being a pricey/time-consuming let down.  And there go my dreams of being a professional recipe tester!  Just kidding, I think most people who do that for a career have culinary degrees 🙂  The only upside?  It made cooking things I picked myself extra fun this week!

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It’s Friday AND the first day of spring!  Do you have fun weekend plans?