Totally Delicious Smoothie

I love fruit, so I buy a lot of it at the grocery store. Sometimes I buy too much, much more than I can eat. Sometimes a sad container of berries will find its way to the back of my fridge and I'll forget about it. 

This was the case of the half pint of strawberries that S excavated from the back of the fridge this morning. 

He called me this afternoon. Eat the strawberries he said. They only have one, maybe two, days left in them.  

Oh no! I thought. Not the strawberries. I remember earlier this week, loving the strawberries. Devouring their deliciousness. The redness! The sweetness! With love like that, how...why...did I forget about them?

Alas, I had bought other fruit that had swept me off my feet. 

  

After the phone call with S had ended, I went to the fridge to examine the strawberry damage. 

They did not look too bad. Still bright red, but quite squishy. Not really the way I like to enjoy my strawberries. 

I knew I needed to eat these poor, soft strawberries. But how? 

I turned to my backup plan. 

I make a mean smoothie. They are so easy. Smoothies save fruit, even if it means the pitiful fruit must get pulverized.

I make my fruit smoothies with four easy ingredients:

Soy Milk

Ice

Vanilla extract

Sad Fruit, looking for a new beginning

Like I said, so easy.

So delicious!

I hope you have been inspired to save some of your old fruit with a delicious & refreshing smoothie!

Homemade Pesto

The weather has been so unseasonably warm & wonderful that I decided to try my hand at homemade pesto!

I did not add pine nuts, so I guess this isn't a traditional pesto, but S and I thought it was delicious!

I bought a package of fresh basil from my local market. When I separated the leaves from the stalks I ended up with about three handfuls of basil leaves.

I decided my stick blender would be the perfect pesto-making tool. My older sister gifted me a hot pink stick blender for this past Christmas. Lucky me! The stick blender came with its own container for blending which was pretty cool. It it tall and skinny which helps eliminate splatter. I love pesto in my belly, not in my hair!

I love garlic so I used ten cloves of garlic. Haha, yes, ten. I minced it up by hand, and threw it in with the basil.

I seasoned my deliciousness with a little kosher salt, lots of black pepper, and a little shake of red pepper flakes.  

Next I added a bunch of Extra Virgin Olive Oil & blended away!

Yum! Look how delicious it looks!  

To finish it off, I added Parmesan cheese to the pesto. I like the powdered stuff best. (Strange, yes?)

S and I made grilled fresh mozzarella & pesto panini sandwiches with my homemade pesto.

They were ooey, gooey, garlicky & delicious!

I hope you are inspire to try your hand at homemade pesto - it was a quick & easy way to amp up our supper!

How to Throw an Awesome Super Bowl Party

I love hosting parties!
I have figured out that there are a few necessities you need in order to throw a great party.

1. Fun friends!

2. You! Are you a fun person? Are you able to roll with the punches?

3. Prizes. People love prizes. 

That's it!

Well, actually it is probably a good idea to feed your guests. Serving some delicious food is always a good idea when hosting a party. You don't even have to make the food yourself. I love to cook, but when I throw a party, I like to cheat the food a little bit and not cook 100% from scratch. That way I can enjoy my guests & the party.   If you like drinking adult beverages, having some delicious beer & spirits on hand is also a great idea. 

Most of the time you guests will end up bringing food & drinks to share. Sharing is always awesome.

I know the Super Bowl was so three weeks ago, but I just got around to finishing this post now. 

We had a really great party all around, but I think my favorite part ended up being totally unplanned.

Nearly everybody that came over to party with us was sporting some sort of "non-traditional" Super Bowl outfit.

The Breakdown:

Orioles Jerseys: 2

Ravens Jerseys: 2

Soccer (Futbal) Jerseys: 1

Redskins Tshirts: 1

None of us in Baltimore (except for that Patriots fan we let inside on accident) was impressed with either team that made it to the Bowl. I think we all addressed the situation perfectly!

  

I'm so excited to share our Super Bowl party with you!

S & I made meatballs.

We actually made an army of meatballs.

I used four ingredients for the meatball glaze. 

It was so easy. I mixed everything up the day before, let it marinate overnight in the fridge, then heated it up in the crock-pot. I cooked the meatballs in the oven, then added them to the crock-pot. 

I love crock-pot foods for parties because they stay warm the entire duration of the event!

I also made Spinach & Ricotta Puffs & 7 Layer Dip.

One of our friends was awesome & made Football Cupcakes with purple frosting! (Purple was for the Baltimore Ravens, who were in the Super Bowl of course...did we watch the same game?!) 

Another friend of ours made a fantastic custom Super Bowl Cookie! He is truly a baking master.

 I gave the cheeses flag labels. 

I made Jello Shots!

You like my Redskins Tshirt?

S & I wrote up a whole bunch of Prop Bets!

This was such a fun idea! I wrapped up a bunch of little prizes for the winners (and sometimes the winners took shots!)

We offered up two big prizes:

One for the person who guessed closest to the final score

And One Grand Prize for the person who got the most Prop Bets correct

(The same person actually ended up winning both, but we like him so all was good!)

The Projector!

We all got to watch the game in big style

These were the little prizes

What fun!

I wrapped them all up & let the winners chose their prize.

The only thing better than winning a prize, is winning a wrapped prize & getting to unwrap it!

The Final Score Prize was an elite candy bar (not pictured).


The GRAND PRIZE (for the person who got the most prop bets correct) was a pair of Baltimore Orioles baseball tickets!
(Yeah, S and I rock out in the gift-giving category.)

Well, I hope I have inspired you to put on your party pants & host a fantastic party in the future!
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Football Party!

We love football in this home! I am a Washington Redskins fan and S is a Baltimore Ravens fan, which means that our teams play each other every couple years during the regular season, but usually every season we play against each other during preseason.

This year was a preseason game, and we decided to have a little party to help break in our new house, and celebrate the upcoming football season!

I made football shaped brownies!

I let the brownies cool completely before I cut them into football shapes.

I drew out my own template on white paper and used it to cut each football out of the giant sheet of brownies!

A couple of nice looking footballs.

I made a batch of royal icing and used a baggie with its corner clipped off to decorate the footballs. 

They look great, don't you think!

I also made my own scratch offs for half-time!

Using regular white computer paper, I printed the pictures & words I wanted on the scratch off.

I bought heavy duty scrapbooking paper from Michael's in burgundy (Redskins colors!) & purple (Raven's colors!). 

I also bought a sheet of the most awesome, sparkly gold scrapbooking paper. 

Everything is better with sparkles.

Using my paper cutters from Creative Memories, I cut all the paper down to size. 

I made up my own size for my home made scratch offs, they were approximately 2" x 5".

If I had known where my gluestick was, I would have used that to glue all the paper together. Unfortunately, I did not know where it was, so I used rolled up tape to piece these things together. 

I used the purple card stock as the base, then cut out a piece of burgundy half the size of the purple, and taped it on top. 

Then I cut a sliver of sparkly gold paper, and taped that over the middle.

Then I taped down the white paper with the pictures & words. 

They are starting to look awesome! 

To make the "scratch" part of the scratch off I used clear packing tape, metallic silver craft paint, & dish-washing liquid. 

First, I taped over the "Winner/Not a Winner" messages with clear packing tape. 

Next, I mixed equal parts metallic silver craft paint & dish-washing liquid on a plate. I used a tiny foam craft brush to carefully paint a silver rectangle over top of the clear packing tape, taking care not to get any paint off the sides of the tape.  

Biscuit helped, naturally.

It doesn't take too long for the paint to dry, I think I let mine sit for about an hour though.

Now you can scratch your way to victory!

S and I made caramel popcorn from scratch, one of our favorite party treats!

I found the recipe last year from this blog. We've made the recipe three times now, and each time it was a great success! Everybody we feed it to can't believe that it is homemade. That denotes a winning recipe in my book.

After he finished the caramel popcorn, S got into the spirit of the evening.

Comet is enjoying some pregame coffee table. 

Notice our Redskins & Ravens team blankets decorations. 

All together now!

Football brownies, ready for eating!

Homemade halftime scratch offs, ready for scratching!

I made a goodie bag of prizes for the halftime scratch off winner. 

Inside I put a whistle, a squishy stress ball shaped like a football, a glitter bouncy ball, and a homemade penalty flag. 

All of our friends loved their scratch offs, but only one person won!

Urban Garden

I always wanted to raise chickens. Ever since seeing them as a kid at the County Fair, I have thought they were great! What could be better than a pet that pulls its own weight, so to speak. With raising chickens you get comedic companionship, as well as the obvious, eggs! 

I'm 100% sure I could get S on board with the chickens, however, Baltimore City does not allow its residents to raise chickens on their land. Cue the boos and rotten tomatoes. 

So I decided to focus my hippy spirit on another type of country-meets-urban activity: the Urban Garden! 

We got SO lucky with our city apartment. Not only do we have a fire escape, but we have a *useable* fire escape. That is, one that has a landing versus a fire escape that merely has a latter to climb down. The perfect place for an Urban Garden!

My grandmother (who has the greenest of green thumbs) gave me two small tomato plants midway through the summer. Now, I do love a good project, but sometimes (most of the time?) I am a slow starter. Those two sad tomato plants stayed in their tiny containers in my sunroom for nearly a month before I decided what I could plant them in.

Enter the milk crate! I had the idea to plant the 2 tomato plants in a milk crate, and S had the idea to use the plastic sheeting so the whole process would not be too messy. So, I outfitted the milk crate with the plastic sheeting; securing it with gaff tape and poking holes in the bottom and sides to let the water drain out. Biscuit helped hold the plastic sheeting down with her heft.

Check our the rest of the Urban Garden story, after the break!