Sunny Anderson Visits Philadelphia

July 21, 2010 By 1 Comment
Last night I noticed that one of my fave peo­ple, Sunny Ander­son, was going to be in Philly for a hot minute talk­ing about her upcom­ing appear­ance at the Atlantic City Food & Wine Fes­ti­val (huz­zah! AC goes Foodie!)  Now, if you have never gone to one of these events, you really should – great peo­ple, great chefs and seri­ously to. die. for. food & wine.  LOVE these events. 
Ear­lier today, Sunny dropped by Philly’s The 10! Show and demo’d her Flank Steak with Drunken Pep­perswhich looks to be a fab­u­lous sum­mer dish.  C’mon, drunken pep­pers – you know you want to try that!
 
The recipe is for her killer Flank Steak Faji­tas is here and if you do try it, let us know, will ya?  Sunny – glad you were in Philly – even if it was for a very short visit! 
 
 

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Filed Under: Events, Food Network, Philly, Sunny Anderson, Video Tagged With: , , , ,

Obsessed With: Crate & Barrel’s French Kitchen Table and Island

July 20, 2010 By 4 Comments
Crate & Barrel Marble French Kitchen Table
While perus­ing the goods at King of Prussia’s Crate & Bar­rel recently, I decided to take a detour from my usual route and went upstairs to “look” at the fur­ni­ture.  I was actu­ally want­ing to look at the out­door fur­ni­ture for my bal­cony but after dis­miss­ing a few wicker chairs as way too expen­sive, I spot­ted this in the cor­ner and my heart sang.
 
CaB MarbleKitchenTable 300x265 Obsessed With: Crate & Barrels French Kitchen Table and Island
Isn’t it gor­geous?  I could just pic­ture this in a gor­geous town­home (should I ever find one that fits the bill and, oh yeah, be able to AFFORD ONE!) and, as an added bonus, they had a French Kitchen Island.
CaB MarbleKitchenIsland 300x265 Obsessed With: Crate & Barrels French Kitchen Table and Island
Yes, I know - they are crazy expen­sive.  The table alone is about the price of about 3 pairs of Louboutins but one can dream, right?   We won’t even talk about the cost of the chairs.
One day… One day…
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Filed Under: Crate and Barrel, Furniture, Obsessed With Tagged With: , ,

Tips & Tricks — Cast Iron Skillets

July 18, 2010 By 4 Comments
Lodge-CastIronSkillet

Lodge CastIronSkillet 150x150 Tips & Tricks Cast Iron SkilletsFor the longest, I have never had an actual cast iron skil­let.  Sure, I have my Le Creuset but those lovelies are enam­eled (and let this gal toss them in the dish­washer).  After watch­ing one too many episodes of Cook­ing For Real and Viva Daisy, I noticed that  a cast iron skil­let appeared to be a favorite go-to piece.  Sure, it’s not too expen­sive and from what my father told me, my Bampa used his cast iron skil­let often.   

So, with that, I decided to visit the local Tar-Jay and found a great Lodge Cast Iron skil­letfor about $18.  It’s sup­pos­edly pre-seasoned but is def­i­nitely not dish­washer friendly. 

So, do any of you sea­soned cast iron experts have any tips and tricks for those of us that are new to the Cast Iron Skil­let club?

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Filed Under: Cookware, Daisy Martinez, Food Network, Sunny Anderson, Weekly Question

Anthony Bourdain Might Be Onto Something

July 16, 2010 By 2 Comments
Like many, I’m cur­rently engrossed in Anthony Bourdain’s lat­est book Medium Raw: A Bloody Valen­tine to the World of Food and the Peo­ple Who Cook Anthony Bourdain Might Be Onto Something and he might have an idea that I believe cur­rent school dis­tricts might want to pay atten­tion to.
————————–
Grow­ing up, I have to con­fess, I didn’t do much cook­ing, if any.  My first recipe I remem­ber mak­ing on my own was a home­made lasagna made from a recipe off of the side of the pasta box.  My par­ents gave praise but look­ing back and remem­ber­ing my con­coc­tion of spices that I “added to the recipe,” I think my par­ents were being WAY too kind (much like when my friends and I regaled the par­ents with Bar­bie Cabaret Shows that I think I charged admis­sion to and they sat through patiently).  I remem­ber some other kitchen exper­i­ments that were attempted over the years and I’m pos­i­tive now that per­haps my idiot fiancée was cor­rect in his assump­tion that my cook­ing skills were *ahem* a bit chal­lenged (well in his words I was the worst cook to ever come near a stove but then again, he wasn’t so great either!)  Over the years, it was eas­ier to call take out than rather try to put together some­thing more chal­leng­ing than a box of mac & cheese and I admit that it wasn’t until I really started to develop an inter­est in cook­ing that I learned that I do, indeed, have a skill set for cook­ing and even some­times bak­ing.  Does that mean I’m going to open a restau­rant or some­thing along that lines – not in the least.  I leave that for the more sea­soned and trained professionals.
 
One thing I DON’T remem­ber from grow­ing up is tak­ing a cook­ing class.  While I’m sure my high school had Home Eco­nom­ics at some point or another, per­haps it was one of those elec­tives where I chose to take Span­ish (or per the direc­tive of my father – Latin) and I just didn’t see the need for learn­ing how to cook, properly vac­uum or sew.  At the time of grad­u­a­tion, I wasn’t think­ing of any­thing out­side of pos­si­bly being an enter­tain­ment lawyer (trust me, I got smarter as I got older and learned – hell to the no!) and lawyers don’t cook – they don’t have time.  I also remem­ber think­ing high school didn’t pre­pare us for much of any­thing – sure we could read and write and pos­si­bly add 2 + 2 and get 4 but I didn’t real­ize that Alge­bra would be vital for bal­anc­ing a check­book or Chem­istry would be much like cook­ing.  Long story short, I prob­a­bly could burn water if I tried.
 
Anthony Bour­dain talks about the need for chil­dren to learn to cook and how cook­ing received a bad rap.  Many of the boys wouldn’t dare take home ec due to ridicule and the stigma, while girls were expected to thrive in their “house­wife train­ing” class so, there­fore, many girls decided to protest.  If the boys didn’t have to take it, why shouldn’t the girls and the school dis­tricts caved, many not requir­ing their stu­dents to take home eco­nom­ics.  He pro­poses a manda­tory cook­ing skill set for chil­dren to learn that way they can fend for them­selves when they get older rather than rely­ing on restau­rant din­ing and takeout. 
The pro­posed culi­nary skills that chil­dren should learn include: 
  • Proper knife skills
  • How to roast a chicken
  • How to make a vinaigrette
  • How to shop for and select produce
  • How to make soups and stocks (there­fore adding fru­gal skills to the table)
  • How to filet and cook a fish
  • How to cook veg­eta­bles properly
Of course there is way more than that but I think he might be onto some­thing.  These are all skills I’m learn­ing NOW and I’m well into my 30s.  Some­where, Julia Child is lis­ten­ing and nod­ding in agree­ment, I think.
 
What skills and tech­niques do you think today’s chil­dren should learn that you did not know grow­ing up?
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Filed Under: Anthony Bourdain, Cooking Classes, Julia Child, Random Mess, Rant Tagged With: , , , ,

Guilty of Idiocy: MoreRebates.com

July 15, 2010 By 3 Comments

As you all know, when things are good – I tell you and when things, quite frankly, stink – I’ll tell you. Such is the case with MoreRebates.com.

When our rela­tion­ship started, it was good. We went through our hon­ey­moon phase with me test­ing their pro­gram and actu­ally lov­ing the fact that they give rebates for sites that might not be on the typ­i­cal cash back path. Well, as you know I main­tain more than one blog and I use one spe­cific host­ing pro­gram for them that I ADORE called Host­ga­tor. When I saw that I could get cash back from Mor­eRe­bates for Host­ga­tor, I was thrilled. There was no fine print of a “one time only” deal and I used them for two sep­a­rate blogs that I moved from Blog­ger. Both times I had cash back cred­ited accordingly.

Well, after log­ging in one day to check the cash back per­cent­ages for a store since they aren’t listed on EVRewards.com, I noticed that one of my pur­chases was miss­ing – namely the first Host­ga­tor pur­chase.   Curi­ous as to why the higher priced host­ing pack­age was not listed (which they get a big­ger com­mis­sion on), I imme­di­ately emailed them to find out what the heck was going on and heard NOTHING. I fig­ured it was a com­puter glitch and made a note to cal­en­dar it to check it in a cou­ple weeks and, again, same sit­u­a­tion. The rebate was STILL miss­ing and now I was really heated. I imme­di­ately emailed them AGAIN and still heard nothing.

I waited a week and checked it again, and while I received a check for one of the rebates, the other rebate was nowhere to be found. I not only emailed them but their par­ent com­pany Val­ueClick (which has some seri­ous lit­i­ga­tion prob­lems) and, like before, heard nothing.

So here’s the issue – you have a cash back com­pany that basi­cally, from my obser­va­tion and expe­ri­ence, appears to pick and chooses what “cash back” they will pay and, not only that, they still charge Host­ga­tor for the refer­ral, but my fave host­ing com­pany gets screwed in the process. How fair is that??? It’s not.

So, if any of you have an issue with them and I referred you, I’m so sorry. Fact is, I had no idea that they were shady and I’m remov­ing any ban­ners from them from my site and they will no longer be on my “Cash Back Tuto­r­ial.” Please check your rebates from them with an eagle eye and, if any are miss­ing, def­i­nitely let them know. I can’t promise that they will respond because from my expe­ri­ence, they seem to either ignore or not answer the hard ques­tions but def­i­nitely call them out on any mistakes.

Mor­eRe­bates – quite sim­ply, we’re done!

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Cool It Down With Blueberry Ricotta Ice Cream

July 14, 2010 By 1 Comment
BlueberryRicottaIceCreamIngredients.jpg

This humid­ity that is fac­ing Philadel­phia is start­ing to make me think Florida wasn’t as toasty.  So, to cool things off, I decided to break in my new ice cream maker.  Giada de Lau­ren­tiis did a choco­late chip ice cream made with ricotta and I thought this might be fun to try, except with Jer­sey blue­ber­ries fresh from Maple Acres Farm.

One tip with the ice cream maker – make sure to let the bowl freeze overnight or else you might have not so frosty ice cream.  I added a lemon sim­ple syrup and that com­ple­mented the blue­ber­ries along with the vanilla and the ricotta cheese added a nice rich­ness and every­thing was able to be made sim­ply with­out heat­ing up the house.  It was a nice way to beat the heat and I’m going to def­i­nitely be try­ing a few dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions – hmmmm… won­der how a caramel nutella swirl will work out with this recipe. 

BLUEBERRY RICOTTA ICE CREAM

Recipe adapted from Giada de Laurentiis

Ingre­di­ents:

  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 1 15 oz. con­tainer of ricotta cheese (whole milk)
  • 1/2 cup of water
  • 1 cup of sugar
  • 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
  • Zest and juice of one lemon
  • 1 pint of blueberries

Direc­tions:

  1. First pre­pare the sim­ple syrup – com­bine the sugar, water, lemon zest and juice of half the lemon in a pan and bring to a boil over medium heat.  Reduce to a sim­mer for 5 min­utes until the sugar is dis­solved.  Let cool.
  2. Com­bine the ricotta cheese and milk and stir until smooth.  Add the cooled sim­ple syrup and vanilla and stir until combined.
  3. Pour into the ice cream maker and freeze per the manufacturer’s directions. 
  4. 10 min­utes before com­ple­tion, add the blueberries.
  5. Put the fin­ished ice cream in the freezer to firm up a bit and enjoy.

Gather the Ingredients

BlueberryRicottaIceCreamIngredients thumb Cool It Down With Blueberry Ricotta Ice Cream

Churn Churn Churn

BlueberryRicottaIceCreamChurning thumb Cool It Down With Blueberry Ricotta Ice Cream

Add the Blueberries

BlueberryRicottaIceCreamBlueberries thumb Cool It Down With Blueberry Ricotta Ice Cream

Enjoy!

BlueberryRicottaIceCreamFinal thumb Cool It Down With Blueberry Ricotta Ice Cream

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Filed Under: Desserts, Food Network, Giada de Laurentiis, Local Finds, Philly, Recipe, Tried and True Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Barefoot Contessa Gives Tips On Organizing Your Kitchen

July 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The Bare­foot Con­tessa, Ina Garten, sat down with House Beautiful’s for­mer edi­tor in chief, Stephen Drucker, and talks about how to orga­nize one’s kitchen.  If he looks famil­iar to you, it’s because he has been on a few episodes of the Bare­foot Con­tessa.  I think I have some kitchen reor­ga­ni­za­tion to start plan­ning, stat!

Enjoy!

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Filed Under: Barefoot Contessa, House Beautiful, Kitchen Organization, Video Tagged With: , , ,
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