Giving Thanks

C and I had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Last weekend, we had several friends over for a thanksgiving dinner.  Here are some of the more popular recipes: 

Broccoli Casserole

Recipe from C's Family (picture from Google)

• 2 10 oz packages of frozen chopped broccoli
• 2-3 cups instant rice
• 1 can Cream of Celery soup
• 2 cups shreeded velveeta cheese
• 1 tablespoon of butter
• 1 chopped onion
• 1/2 - 1 sleeve of Ritz crackers, crumbled
• salt and pepper to taste

Cook rice and broccoli according to their packages.  Preheat oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Sautee the onions in the butter over medium heat. Mix the rice, broccoli, soup, cheese and onions in a large mixing bowl and pour mixture into a greased 9 x 13 baking pan.  Top the mixture with Ritz crackers.  Bake for about 45 minutes, or until bubbly and lightly browned.

Sweet Potato Casserole 

Recipe and picture from Cooking Light

• 5 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch cubes
• 1 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 3 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup finely chopped pecans (divided in half)
• 1 small bag of mini marshmallows

Put sweet potatoes in boiling water and reduce heat. Simmer for 15 minutes, or until very tender.  Drain and cool.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.  Place potatoes in a large bowl and add brown sugar, salt and vanilla.  Mash this mixture together.  Fold in half of the pecans. Put mixture into a greased 9 x 13 pan.  Top with marshmallows and remaining pecans.  Bake until golden brown (about 30-40 minutes). 

Bread Pudding with Banana Praline Liqueur

Recipe from Galatoire Restaurant in New Orleans

• 11 large eggs
• 1 1/3 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 24 slices of french bread (about 1 baguette cut into 3/4 inch slices)
• 1 lb salted butter
• 1 lb light brown sugar
• 4 bananas
• 1/2 cup praline liqueur

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Whisk together eggs, sugar, milk, vanilla and cinnamon until well blended.  In a greased 9 x 13 baking dish (or an oversized muffin pan), put the bread slices in the bottom of the dish (or 2 per muffin cup).  Pour the egg and milk mixture over the bread slices, allowing the mixture to saturate the bread.  Bake for about 35 minutes for muffin tins, or 45 minutes for dish (it is done when the pudding is golden and set in the pan).  


While the pudding is in the oven, melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the light brown sugar and whisk until smooth.  Slice the bananas and stir them into the sauce.  Add the praline liqueur. Reduce heat to low.


Remove from bread pudding from oven and allow to sit for 10 minutes. Serve onto plates and ladle the sauce into the pudding.  Serve immediately.




For Thanksgiving day, we went to Louisville to be with my family and met our good friend's beautiful baby girl.   We ate like kings all weekend when C's parents from Tennessee came in town over the weekend for the game.

All I will say is it was our turn :) 

Miscellany Monday

This past weekend was a blast.  Besides going to shoot hoops at Rupp (which again, I promise will be its own post with lots of pictures once hubs sends the photos to me), we ate like fools.  Friday we went to Pazzos. I tried their Garden of Eatin' veggie pizza, and it was delicious. It may be my new favorite pizza there. 

Saturday morning I volunteered with the Habitat For Humanity ambassadors to do paint bulking.  In what I think is ingenious, Habitat is now taking paint donations of latex-based paints.  They are able to re-mix these paints and sell them. Plus, they are selling the old cans for scrap metal.  Overall, you don't have to go through the hassle of disposing of your paint and Habitat makes money--a win/win for all. 

Once the paint is donated, Habitat sorts the paint by color family.  We decided to bulk the earth tones, so we began opening those cans of paint.  Interestingly, paint can go bad--really bad.  Old paint can begin to go putrid and smell disgusting.  I'm talking I-choked-on-the-smell-and-almost-vomited-right-then-and-there disgusting.  I don't think I have ever smelt anything worse. 

Here's a glimpse into just a portion of the bad paint we found.  Clearly, bad paint can't be used, so we have to dispose of that paint and try to salvage the cans for scrap metal.  

 

Once paint passed the smell test, we had to mix it up because it had been sitting for a while. We used power drills to agitate the paint.  I am telling myself that the lighting is bad because hopefully I'm not really that red and my hair doesn't really look like that.

Joe and Kevin pouring the paints over the shifting screens and into the drum.

Once the paint was ready, it was poured into a large drum with 4 paddles that stir all the paints together.  

Toa cleaning out the empty cans.

The empty containers are then filled with sawdust and scraped by hand to remove all the liquid paint. The cans were then crushed so they are ready to be sold for scrap metals.

Once the paint was done mixing, we got to name our color.  We decided on "Awesome Oatmeal" because, well, it's awesome. We made 45 gallons of Awesome Oatmeal, which is now on the shelves at the Habitat Restore. 

On a completely separate note, Cam's mom flew in town for the weekend so on Saturday night we went to Jonathan's for Cam's birthday dinner.  Okay folks, this meal was one of the best meals I've ever had. I've even been to Jonathan's before, but his current menu is my absolute favorite. If you go, definitely get the fried cheese grits with banana pepper sauce. Delicious. Every person loved their entree and were practically licking the plates clean.  For dessert, we got the caramel pound cake and bourbon ball cake. Both were amazing. Top it off with Cakebread wine--best meal of my life.  

Thus, if you have something to celebrate or are just willing to fork over money for good food, definitely go.

Tomorrow I'll do an update on the house--yes, it is still on the market. Hope ya'll had a good weekend!

Weekend Hodgepodge

Hello lovelys, hope ya'll had a great weekend and are staying out of this snow. Here's our weekend recap. All images are thanks to Google images.

On Friday night we went to Table Three Ten with Cam's brother and his girlfriend. We loved the atmosphere of the place: it has exposed, vintage hardwood floor ceilings, exposed brick and concrete, and a general vintage industrial feel.  It had a really "big city" vibe to it, but was still dark and romantic. We had dinner reservations at 8:30, so we waited at the bar for our table and ordered a bottle of wine.  The wine was superb--I believe it was called the cab-sav Espalt and it was delicious.  At 9, we double checked with the manager (who apparently may be a co-owner as well) on our table.  He informed that "because we made late dinner reservations, we would have to wait."  This left a pretty bad taste in my mouth, but he reassured us that it would not be long at all.  At 9:30, we mentioned to the bartender that we had reservations for an hour ago and were getting sick of waiting.  He was very pleasant and comped us a round of beers and checked on our table.  We were finally seated at 9:50. Moral of story: dinner reservations may not mean much here.  In Table Three Ten's defense, they did offer to comp us dessert once we were seated.  However, they ran out of dessert, so they comped us martinis instead. Also, everyone else I know who has been has said they didn't have to wait very long, so maybe our situation was the anomaly.

Now to the food: thank goodness we were told to eat before we went and had small dinner.  The menu was pretty limited and its tapas style.  We ordered the chef's selection of cheese and of the meat for the four of us.  It was the perfect amount of food for us and it was delicious.

Summary: it would be a great place to go to for drinks, appetizers, or a bottle of wine. Otherwise, eat  a small meal before you go.  The atmosphere is very "big city romantic"--i.e., you forget you are in Lexington.  Even if you have a reservation, be prepared to wait.  

On Saturday, I drove to South/Western Kentucky to interview a witness for the Innocence Project. We passed this monstrosity on the way, and I was so intrigued.   No, that is not the Washington Monument.  It is the Jefferson Davis Memorial Park.  I am a little miffed that our state would have a ridiculously large (i.e. expensive) monument and state park to commemorate the President of the Confederacy when our Lincoln memorial is so small in comparison (interesting FYI for those non-Kentuckians: both Lincoln and Davis were born in KY).  But whatever, I should realize I am in the south. Who knew this thing even existed.  Saddest part is that the locals kept telling us that Davis was the president of the US. Maybe we should spend less money on the monument and more on our education system...

Also, if you happen to go that way,  DO. NOT. EVER. stop at the Tumbleweed in Madisonville. We stopped there for lunch and we all had a mild case of food poisoning. Plus, the food was wrenched. Live and learn... 

Yesterday we had a relaxing day: church, cleaning around the house, and watched the super bowl.  We spent the majority of the day looking into some possibly exciting news, so we will keep you posted :) 

Now, off to Zumba and a "butts and guts" workout, haha! My night litigation class just got cancelled so I can go to the Junior League Meeting tonight now--pretty excited!

Playing Hostess

Tonight is our book club night and this month's book was one of my favorites: The Glass Castle. I cannot recommend this book enough--I literally could not put it down.  It is a fabulous memoir by Jeanette Walls.  She spins such interesting tales and portrays her impoverished childhood in a fascinating and humorous way. Seriously, go pick it up (or for you tech-snobs with a Kindle, download it, not that I'm insanely jealous or anything...). 

I'm hosting the book club this month, so I'd thought I would share my appetizer recipes for tonight. I'm not exactly known for my cooking skills so trust me, these are easy-peasy to make. 

Cam and I braved the snow tonight to go grocery shopping. for it  We  also stopped and picked up wine because what book club is complete with a bottle or three? Definitely not ours. Once I made my selection, Cam pointed out that all four bottles I grabbed were Chilean or Argentinean. Apparently, my subconscious is already on vacation. I did intentionally grab two wines from vineyards we are looking to visit, so I'm excited to try those :)
 

Any Blonde Can Cook: 

Okay, I don't know the name of these, but they are from a friend's cookbook, Any Blonde Can Cook--which I think says it all. The cookbook is full of simple recipes that are 3-4 ingredients--just my pace. And, these are delicious. 

• Slice up a baguette and bake the bread at 375 degrees until it is lightly toasted (my oven it's about 7-10 minutes).  
• Remove from oven, and spread a layer of goat cheese on the slices.  
• Sprinkle walnut pieces over the goat cheese. 
• Drizzle honey and goat cheese over the walnuts.

Olive Tapenade Palmiers
This recipe is from one of my cookbooks, Small Parties. I have never made them before, but it sounds right up my alley: I love anything with olives.

•  Unfold 1 package (17.3 oz) of a frozen phyllo sheet (puff pastry), separate the two sheets, and use a rolling pin to roll each sheet so that no folds are visible.  
• In your food processor, mix together an olive tapenade (a blend of your favorite olives). When I make tapenade, I use 1 cup black olives, 1/2-3/4 cup green olives, 1/2-3/4 cup kalamata olives, 2 cloves of garlic, a little olive oil, a teaspoon of lemon juice, and a pinch of black pepper. You can do two different ones if you wish since there are two phyllos.
• Spread this olive tapenade onto each phyllo sheet.  
• Sprinkle 1 cup of shredded parmesan cheese over the olive tapenade. 
• Roll each phyllo up halfway, starting at one end (i.e., roll to the center of one phyllo) and then roll from the opposite end so that the two spirals meet in the middle.
• Slice each roll into 1/2 inch slices and lay each side down on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Bake each roll for 425 degrees for 15 minutes, or until golden and puffed.  Allow to cool.

Fancy Brownies
I found this recipe at Big Red Kitchen, and think the picture of hers' says it all...

• Bake a box-mix brownies in a 9x13 pan according to the box's directions and let cool (leaving it in the pan).
• Spread vanilla icing over the brownies so that the icing is approximately 1/4 inch thick. I plan on making my favorite: cream cheese icing. Just cream together one 8 oz container of softened cream cheese, 1/4 cup softened butter,  1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla. 
• In a saucepan, melt 1 stick of butter and 4 oz of semi-sweet chocolate chips until it forms a smooth glaze. 
• Remove glaze from heat and pour the glaze over the icing-ed brownies evenly. Let glaze set and then slice up brownies and serve. 

Don't forget about entering the giveaway in yesterday's post!

Baker's Dozen

Finals are over! Best part: I lived (here's to hoping I can say the same for my GPA). 

To celebrate and get myself into the holiday spirit, Cam's mom and I  listened to pandora's Christmas Rock station and made Christmas cookies yesterday.  And not just a few cookies; we spent over 9 hours making a variety of enough cookies to fill several tins and tupperwares.  It was really fun because my family is German and his mother's family is Russian so we had very different family recipes.  We made (all images thanks to Google--I was too messy to take any pictures yesterday):

 

Linzer Cookies (with raspberry filing)

Chocolate drops--be jealous sissy :)

We each made our family's versions of sugar cookies.  Mine are more  the style at a German bakery with a flour base and a very sweet icing to drizzle over the whole cookie, and his mom's are more of a traditional sugar cookie with decorative icing.

Gingerbread men

Russian Tea Cakes (they taste like Mexican wedding cakes with chopped roasted pecans and walnuts--delicious!)

I'm excited to finally have some time to catch up on everyone's life!

April Showers...

...Bring June Weddings.

I co-hosted a couples shower Saturday at a local winery for our very good friends, Ceci and Joe. 

Photo from Talon Winery's website

 

 We did a private tasting for 20 in the tasting room and brought food to go with the tasting.  Here's the food spread Julie and I made for the shower (sorry I was too busy to take pictures before people started eating, oops). 

 We made sangria, tea, bruschetta, a cheese board, a bean dip, guacamole, tortellini, spinach dip, fresh fruit and fruit dip, and brought Gigi's cupcakes for dessert. When I have more time, I'll post recipes in a future post. Everyone seemed to have a good time and enjoyed the wine tasting. My personal favorite at Talon: Equestrian Series.  I generally prefer Talon's reds to their whites, and this limited edition red was fabulous.

We are so excited for Joe and Ceci's wedding and couldn't be happier to have such good friends.

Wedding Wednesday

 

 image from google.com

My productiveness for the day is peaking: 

• Two loads of laundry, cleaned and folded. Check. 
• Dishes cleaned and put away. Check. 
• Evidence outlined (to date) for finals. CHECK (this one is huge!) 
• Minor fire extinguished about a shower I'm co-hosting and event "firmed" up. Check.  
• 30+ submissions for journal read, reviewed and decisions rendered. Check

 Still left and in process of doing: 

• Finishing my personal submission for journal. 
• Cleaning house thoroughly. 
• Tackle the piles of reading I have to do for tomorrow's class. 

 In the process of cleaning up the house, I stumbled across a container in the freezer that has the last extremely freezerburned remains of our wedding cake that my mother-in-law someone must have put there while we were on our honeymoon. I did not plan on keeping our cake to eat on our one year, so I was really surprised to find it nine months later. It made me reminisce about our wedding day and I thought I'd share pictures of our wedding cake.  

If anyone is interested, The Time Photography was our photographer.  Tinker's Cake Shop made our cake (and groomscake). We highly recommend both of them--the cake was delicious and I feel the pictures speak for themselves.

We were inspired by the golds and scrolling detail of our reception site when we picked out what we wanted. 

Again, inspired by our reception site, the Palace Theatre (built in 1920s), we selected a 1920s cake topper that vaguely resembled us, which is definitely one of our most precious keepsakes from the wedding. We found the topper at Fancyflours.

Cam designed his groomscake based on this pillow we have in our living room, from Catstudio. 

  2nd Photo actually from a friend (I think it shows good detail of the cake). 

We wanted a Kentucky wedding, so we had it made in the shape of Kentucky and filled it with cartoon-styled landmarks.   

Well, off to finish my chores. Happy Wednesday! 

A Magnificent Menu Monday

My best friend, Kristin, just recently moved into town to start medical school. I am so excited to have her close by again! I went over today to see her and her new house. I love it! She has such good taste decorating--I'm so excited to see it progress. My favorite part of her house now: definitely the color of her bedroom.  She painted it Iconic Sky by Behr and has white and silver decor. Her bedroom has such a crisp, clean feel to it. 

 

Image from Behr Paint: Iconic Sky 501C-1 is the wall color.

We decided to take advantage of the nice day and took our pups to the arboretum for a nice long walk. Both dogs are about the same size and got along really well. When I got home, I got outside and trimmed up the holly bushes that so desperately needed it.

 

In an effort to eat healthier and generally be a better wife, I have decided to start planning out the weekly menus in advance. This is probably more difficult in our house because I am a vegetarian and Cam isn't, so we tend to eat different meals. Also, he takes night classes Monday and Tuesday and isn't home until late, so we have both snacked before we eat dinner then. Also, we have already gone to the grocery store so I can't be too creative this week, but I will try in next weeks to be better! But, here's my attempt this week: 

Monday: Cam: Tuna Salad; Lauren: Thai (left over) 

Tuesday: Grilled Provolone Cheese and Tomato Bisque Soup

Wednesday: Cheese Ravioli with a Herb/Olive Oil Sauce and Steamed Asparagus with a Lemon Parmesan Drizzle

Thursday: Margarita Pizza 

Friday-Sunday: Eating Dinner Out (lucky us!)

Hope you all can enjoy this beautiful weather as well! 

They are HERE....

Girl Scout cookies have arrived! We have a record low 7 boxes in our house, probably because Cam gave all sweets for Lent so I felt fat knowing every box I order is for me alone. I seriously have an apparently well known sugar addiction, and have yet to admit I have a problem. And I may or may not have already taken that down to 6 boxes remaining....


Also in our freezer: Thin Mint ice cream (heaven on earth). I don't think it can get any better in my book. 

It always brings up the age old debate in our household--What is the proper name for the cookies?
Me                                  Cam
Samoas             v.            Caramel DeLites

Tag-a-longs       v.             Peanut Butter Patties

Trefoils             v.             Shortbreads

Do-si-dos           v.            Peanut Butter Sandwiches

So what do ya'll call them and what's your favorite cookie? 

my favorite: samoas with thin mints as a close second. 

Cam's favorite: thin mints, hands down. 

Much sugary love, 

Lauren

Birthday Weekend and Girl's Get Together

Sorry for the double update, but it all is clearly too much for one posting. Apologies in advance.

C and pup both had birthdays the weekend. C turned halfway to old (or 25 in layman's terms) and pup is now 3.

My favorites playing dead in bed on their birthday.

His dad and stepmom, who live in TN, came in town to celebrate (likely just to celebrate C's birthday, but we won't tell pup that). C and I cleaned around the house before they came, including the dirtiest part of the house: our bengal cat. She literally often refuses to clean herself, and honestly would smell awful if she didn't get regular baths. I laugh that C, the biggest clean freak of a husband I could think of, would own the filthiest cat. Luckily, she likes water so it's not a big ordeal.

On Friday night, we cooked at the house. Everything turned out well--except of course what I made. Who knew that mashed potatoes take over an hour to heat up in the oven if they were in the fridge beforehand? Clearly not me because I served freezing cold mashed potatoes. But, lesson learned. Oh well. Everything else was really good.

Saturday morning I went to a great get together with the girls at Buddy's. It was great to see and catch up with the girls I already knew and fabulous to meet so many sweet ladies. We will all have get together again some time soon! After our meeting, I met up with C and his family at Drake's to eat lunch and catch the second half of a certain game that shall not be mentioned. At least Kansas lost as well, right?

After lunch, C's brother, who works in advertising for Rupp, took us to the holy grail of college basketball itself for a behind-the-scenes tour. As you are probably aware, C and I met at UK and bleed blue, so this was super neat to see all the different parts of arena without having 24,000 other crazy fans around.

Shot of Rupp as the floor was being laid and C and I on the floor.

C, doing the John Wall while "dunking" on the UK goals before they were put back onto the floor.

C in the doorway of the locker room. The giant wall-sized blood bag is my favorite advertisement in Rupp.

That night eight of us went to Euro Wine and Tapas Bar in Nicholasville for dinner. C has been talking about trying to for a month now so I figured his birthday was the perfect time.

I initially made reservations on Friday night without a problem,but then remembered that no one else could eat meat since its Lent and we are Catholic, so I called to switch the reservation to Saturday. I called almost every night they were supposedly open throughout the week and no one ever answered or returned the two voicemails I left. Sketch.

We made the drive to Nicholasville with fingers crossed and a backup restaurant in mind. Luckily, they were open and informed us that they just have policy of not answering their phone or checking their voicemail. We ordered almost every tapas on the menu and C and I really enjoyed the restaurant.

Everyone's dinner, including pup's, was lip-licking good.

This morning we had a fabulous breakfast at Doodles. None of us had been and it is nice to finally have good breakfast-style place in Lexington. I'll admit, I'm still partial to Wild Eggs in Louisville, but Doodles was a great find. Doodles is an eco-friendly and locally grown, which I really appreciate. 

C had a wonderful birthday. Not only did he get to spend it with his family, he received a set of 8 Wusthof steak knives, serving pieces of our silver, a statute of a jockey for our living room, a needlepoint flask, a bottle of Chimay, and much appreciated money.

I loved the card I got him since I am a democrat and he's more conservative (and grumpy about paying taxes):

Next best gift: a signed John Wall jersey from his brother that we will get framed.

But he loved the present he got himself the best: A CAR.

You read it right. He traded in his truck and bought himself a car. I love the car and have made him promise to keep it for at least 4 years. He's a serial car trader-inner (seriously, he's had 8 cars since he has been driving), so we will see how that works out. But so far we love it.

Much love,

Lauren

Spring Fever and Food

We were house-sitting for two different families while they were out of town this past week so we have been running all over the city checking on the houses. One is a gorgeous horse farm (actually where took our engagement pictures) and two of the mares just had foals. Seriously, does it get any more Kentucky than this?

Being around these racehorses just made me so excited for Keeneland in a month and for Spring in general. I have been rather bitter towards the idea of horses since I began an equine law class this semester because a thesis paper is looming over my head. These beautiful babies helped me to snap out of that quickly.

On our way home, we stopped by a bulk store and decided to try to buy groceries for the month rather than go every week. We managed to overflow the giant grocery cart and as we went to check out we started to panic--it seems like every item you throw in the car is at least 10 bucks. Luckily, we stayed under $200 even though we purchased pricier items like cleaning staples. Our fridge, freezer and pantry are literally overflowing. This is definitely what we plan on doing every month now and just getting a few things from the grocery store every week that don't make sense to buy in bulk (i doubt the two of us will use 2 gallons of mayonnaise any time soon).

Every bin is absolutely overflowing--it is wonderful to actually have food in the house! Hopefully in all this food I can actually find an inspiration to start cooking.

Much love,

Lauren