Famous Foodies Like My Stuff

So I am perusing Food Network magazine the other day when I stumble across this!

It's my cow creamer, the one that started our first registry argument, featured prominently in the house of The Pioneer Woman.

Anyone see a pineapple corer there? No? I thought so.

Take THAT, Scott!

Weekend Wrap-Up

I thought this would be our first appearance of spring here in Minnesota. It lasted about three hours, I think.

I don't know for sure because I didn't really leave the house on Saturday. The roommate and hubs ran a 7k downtown. We'd had a less than stellar tantrum week with Wee 'Burb so I opted to stay home with her. I also opted to stay inside because she had an epic meltdown at Target and I was too gun shy to take her out of doors in her current state.

In exchange for a day full of baby 'burbdom, Scott took her over while I went to my first BLOGGER MEETUP! It's so lame how excited I was to meet Small Town Mommy, her friend from Redhead Ranting, and my blogger bestie Tenaciously Yours. We met up for an awesome buffet at Santorini. I adore their feta and chicken salad, it might be the highlight of my weekend other than hanging out and talking cooking with these awesome ladies. Please go read their blogs if you don't already!

I love to hang out in my jammies in the rain, so as soon as I got home, I jumped into sweats and settled in with coupons. Until all hell broke loose.

Last night, Scott had to work late and at 1:30 a.m. I heard banging in the bathroom. The door had been sticky all week, and it finally held tight. I had to put all my (half asleep) weight into the door to bust him out. So he set out to Home Depot to purchase new doorknobs.

All was cool until he started to do the work. Wee 'Burb wanted to help. I had to stop her from helping. Often.

Cue about 2 hours of tantrums. She'd be fine for a second and then literally FLING herself around the house, sobbing hysterically.

One said fling took her face-first into a drawer on the coffee table.

She immediately grew a goose egg that made her face look like those kids from The Hills Have Eyes. I panicked for the normal Mom I-hate-when-my-kid-is-hurt reason. And then a rather vain reason.

She's supposed to be a flower girl in my little brother's wedding next weekend. As it is, she's not walking. Now she'll be the girl who sits in her flower girl dress with a) a ginormous bruise on her little face or b) a ton of makeup a la Toddlers and Tiaras because I freak out and cover her with concealer.

But for whatever reason, this knocked her into a better attitude. And we even got this far with the whole "on your feet NOW, girl!"



You can't see the bruise, right? RIGHT? Lie to me, people!


That's her standing with no help! Oh, and tearing apart my house in her insane rages.

So how were your weekends? Have you done Blogger Meetups if you have a blog? I was very nervous meeting all these people I read all the time, but actually hanging out with them was even more fun than I had imagined.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's SuperCooks!

When Scott and I were living in his condo together, and we both had office jobs, we were pretty good about sharing food responsibilities.

At the time, I had approximately four go-to dishes. Two of which I recently found out he was less than fond of, and had only been pretending to like for certain selfish reasons I imagine you all can figure out on your own.

When it was his evening to cook, I would continually be amazed at his lack of plan.

Me? I had a recipe, I checked off said recipe to make sure I had all my ingredients. When I was ready to cook, those ingredients were lined up on the counter, in order of appearance in my dish. I pretty much viewed said recipe as navigation instructions from the flight deck: you ignore them, someone dies.

Now, Scott on the other hand, he’s flying without radar and buzzing the tower like Maverick in Top Gun.

Watching him cook was both the most exciting and most nerve-wracking experience. He just threw some stuff in a dish and while that simmered, he’d hunt for something else to throw in the dish, and then he’d top it off with a little something else and toss it on a plate.

Delicious, every time delicious.

I’ve grown some since those days in the sense that I now know more about substitutions, I have general ideas of how long each item should cook. But I still use a recipe as a guide.

This growth has come mostly out of necessity. With me working at home, it just makes sense that I handle the meals. Also because I have been trying to lose weight and eat healthier, I’ve become an obsessive meal planner and it’s easier for me to cook the meals I know I can eat rather than letting him go willy nilly and me trying to figure out the nutritional content of “um, I think I threw some tequila in, mighta been a cup, mighta been like a few tablespoons? I was kind of in the zone, Babe.”

In the last six months for money and weight loss purposes, I have become an obsessive meal planner. Sadly, winter has ruined a good chunk of my best-laid plans so far this year.

You see, when snow is about to hit Suburbia, people flock to the grocery stores like they’re stocking a bomb shelter. And guess what they do after snow hits? Yeah, the same thing.

Recently, this became a big problem when we had invited some friends over for brunch. I, of course, had planned to make a quiche and some elaborate sides that would make Rachael Ray turn spinach green with jealousy.

Then it snowed. And snowed. By the time the snow stopped and Scott had fired up the snowblower, it was mere hours before my friends were to arrive. And I was in full panic because all we had in the fridge was some eggs, milk, and less than stellar cheddar cheese.

But I was NOT about to go shopping. If I had to serve them egg on toast, I was not going shopping.

Suddenly I remembered this website a friend of mine had sent me. SuperCook is a GREAT site to help you figure out how what to make with what you have in the house. MAGICAL!

I began crazily entering any random item we had in our fridge and freezer, and it was giving me lists and lists of recipes I could make. I ended up making an egg bake with frozen potatoes o’brien and bacon and some cheddar we had left over from a cheese and cracker night, pumpkin muffins (thanks to Itzys Kitchen I always have those ingredients on hand), and banana bread.

I have to say, it looked like I had spent a ton of time coming up with these elaborate recipes, when in fact I had just whipped these things up.

So to look like a total superstar, I highly recommend Super Cook.

Have you used this site before? Do you have go-to recipe sites you use when you need to make something on the spot? Are you good at creating things or do you need a recipe to guide you?

Things I Love Thursday: Cute Cards

When I was a starving college senior, I attended about a million networking events looking for my first glamorous journalism job (still waiting). At those events, I was very surprised to find how many of the students had generic business cards with their relevant information.

I had no idea where to begin with getting a business card. Everyone I knew was just issued one when they started a job, it never occurred to me to have one before I got a job! So I started doing research on the Web.

To set the scene, I made most of my “mad money” by baby-sitting. I would like to be cool and say I was a nanny, but the reality is, there were a stable of parents that kept me on speed dial because I was the only 21-year-old willing to totally ditch my social life in order to get money. They were rich parents, so I was paid well, but I wasn’t exactly hitting Rockefeller status and I wasn’t about to ask my parents for money to buy business cards I still wasn’t 100 % sure I really NEEDED.

My research led me to Vistaprint and I got some lovely business cards for about $10. See those flower ones, aren’t they cute? Score!

I continued to get e-mails throughout the years, but didn’t pay much attention. I was thrilled with my cards, I just had no need for any of their other services. But while I was planning my wedding, they had an advertisement for free address labels and I thought it would be fun to get some customized labels for our wedding thank-you notes, which you can see above. And while I was there, we got some great deals on other address labels, so we got 200 address labels for $11 (and that’s only because I paid $5 for fast shipping versus their 2-week shipping, which is typically free).

Since, then I have also ordered customized thank-you cards for Wee ‘Burb, and some adorable monkey cards that were $2 for a set of 12, including envelopes with her name and address on them. Free shipping on that one!

My stuff is super cutesy, admittedly. They have some more professional looks for businesses, too. You really can’t beat their prices, and they have a lot of unique styles.

What are your favorite sites for cards and labels?