Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

I love Halloween! An excuse to get creative and have stockpiles of candy in the home? Sign me up! This year, I decided to try new things.

Instead of my usual PG costume choice (most recently Little Red Riding Hood, Audrey Hepburn, & Wilma Flintstone), I wanted to play with costume makeup and go scarier. I decided to be Jigsaw from those ridiculously twisted Saw movies. Creepy, right?? I had a very glamorous image in mind of mixing scary with sexy, complete with a dramatic smoky eye. My makeup guru, Sarah, did a spooky look for her blog HERE that I was using as partial inspiration. But that went down the drain when I grabbed a cheap tube of white face paint. I have never done Halloween makeup before and I learned an important lesson: you get what you pay for. My white face was stiff, cracked, uncomfortable, and not at all pretty. Real eyeshadows wouldn't blend with it, so I had to stick to costume makeup for the entire look. I wiped it all off and reapplied three times before I ran out of time and gave up. So no, you don't get a picture of that costume. But it was fun and different!

My second new Halloween decision was to carve something unique and different into my pumpkin instead of sticking with the usual stencils of bats and jack-o-lantern faces. So a quick google search later, combined with my Breaking Bad withdrawals, produced THIS. Easy enough! I'm super excited about my new Heisenberg pumpkin!

The third new thing is much simpler: roasting pumpkin seeds. I've never done it. I know, ridiculous. So I went to trusty Pinterest and found this pin for OneLittleProject.com. She made it sound so easy, and she was right!  So here goes:

First, get your hands dirty. Separate the seeds from the goop by any means necessary: rake, squeeze, shake...your call. It's time consuming but oddly relaxing. I'll be very impressed if you get ALL the seeds. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Next, rinse the seeds well in a colander. They will still feel slimy but they will be clean. Remove the leftover clumps of pumpkin that you missed earlier.

In a bowl, add 2 tablespoons of oil, and salt to taste. Mix it up to coat the seeds evenly.

Spread the seeds onto a baking pan. You want to try to get them in a single layer as much as possible, or they might clump together during baking. Bake at 325 degrees for 40-45 minutes. Be sure to stir it up once during baking, and try to settle them into a single layer again afterward.

My 1940s oven (I may not be exaggerating) loves to overcook everything, so mine came out a little well done. Still tasty though!

 

Have a safe & fun Halloween!

-A

Mom's Chocolate Mint

Today would have been my mom's 49th birthday. It has been a rough month, with a combination of fieldwork and class, getting sick, and dealing  with personal emotional stressors. A few weeks ago marked the 9th anniversary of her death, and Owen and I took a day trip to Coronado Island in her honor. It is my favorite place in the world, and I am ashamed to admit that it might have been over a year since I had last visited, even though I live only 12 minutes away. Mom always took us there on vacations growing up, before the gorgeous and famous Hotel del Coronado became outrageously expensive. I always feel so connected to her when I go there. I was pleasantly surprised to find this beautiful sand castle in front of the Del that day:

A little background on this: This amazing creation was built by The Sand Castle Man, who is, clearly, very talented. When we did our engagement photos over a year before this, we were in the same spot and actually came across one of his castles. 

Photo credit; Ahlin Photography

Photo credit; Ahlin Photography

It made for a perfect prop to our photos, and I was thrilled to find it again on this special day! He even happened to write the perfect inscription on it.

Anyway, my mother was very into gardening. She grew up on our family farms in Kansas and Arkansas and it stuck with her all her life. I was never that into it, growing up. Spending my weekends in Home Depot and various nurseries was BORING as a child. My brother was way into it, though, so I will definitely be utilizing him as a gardening resource in the future.

The one thing I was into in the garden as a kid was the Chocolate Mint plant that my mom let me pick out. If mint chocolate chip ice cream grew on trees, this would be what it smells like! Amazing. So when I found a chocolate mint plant at Home Depot that week (ironically enough), I knew it would make the perfect tribute to my mother. 

I also knew better than to get my hopes up that it would survive, but that's another story... I have zero success at keeping plants alive and, yet, I dream of having a perfect container garden on my tiny patio full of my favorite herbs and veggies. So I decided to start with chocolate mint.

It came in this great "planter" that you can literally plant as a whole piece without cutting the plant free of any packaging! 

I followed the directions and soaked the entire pot in water for a bit while I prepared my pots.

I found these adorable pots at Home Depot. Once I get some chalk markers, I will write on the provided chalkboard labels and it will be super cute! The best part is that the planters actually have holes drilled into the base, which I've found is frustratingly uncommon in cute planters.

 I decided to fill the other planter with regular mint, since it has been a hot commodity lately with our friends' obsessions with mojitos. I had this sad but adorable little plant from a previous grocery stop. Seriously sad. But also adorable. Note the equally awesome shark sponge holder.

I picked up a "living herb" plant from Sprouts to add to it.

 I'm not claiming to know what I'm doing, but from what I've picked up from my various gardening relatives, I went with this method: I picked up some soil and plant food from Lowes. I only knew to avoid synthetic materials like Miracle Grow, based on things I heard along the way. Sorry, no research to add here. 

 Place some soil in the pot until the plant will sit within a few centimeters of the top of the pot if it sits on top of the soil. Then, I teased the roots. Basically this means you should gently tickle the roots of the plant after you remove it from the original planter, but be sure not to rip anything apart.

Place the plant into the pot on top of the soil and fill in the sides with more soil. Mix in some plant food and gently press the soil down. I chose a slow release plant food because, why make it harder on myself?

 Water and enjoy! I'm very curious how the chocolate mint will taste in a mojito, so I'll keep you posted!

-A

Dinner & Dessert Crepes

   This week, Owen wanted to watch  the Broncos game, which gave me an excuse to hang out with my friend Katie since she and her boyfriend, Andy, are the ones with cable. Since I have zero interest in watching anything football related, unless it's a Super Bowl commercial, I decided that we should make Katie's favorite food: Crepes! We really wanted the dessert crepes, but because we also needed dinner, we decided to make savory crepes too, and I'm SO glad we did!

While Katie mixed the batter, I got to work on the fillings. We wanted to try a bunch of different ones, so we decided on three savory crepes: Red Peppers & Mozzarella, Caprese (minus the balsamic), and Apples & Brie. I cut the ingredients as thinly as possible, to fit better inside a crepe. We also stole some fresh basil from her garden. For our dessert crepes, we went with Nutella (obviously!), Banana, and Strawberry, with various combinations of the three. In my excitement to eat the dessert crepes, I forgot to take photos of the prep, but you all know what bananas and strawberries look like. These are cellphone pictures anyway, so you're not missing much!

We used different recipes for the batter for the sweet and the savory crepe. They varied a bit in ingredient measurements, most importantly in amounts of sugar and eggs. We obviously wanted sweeter for the dessert crepes, but there is nothing wrong with using the same recipe for both types! There are also tons of crepe recipes out there, some with no sugar at all and some with fancier add-ins like lemon zest. This was our first go at it, so we went simple. We also didn't have a legit crepe pan, but they are just as delicious out of a frying pan.

Savory Crepes                                            Sweet Crepes
1.5 C Flour                                                   4 Eggs, lightly beaten
1 T Sugar                                                             1 1/3 C Milk
1/4 t. Salt                                                         2 T Butter, melted
1 C. Milk                                                             1 C. Flour
1 t. Vanilla                                                            2 T Sugar
1 T Butter, melted                                                 1/2 t. Salt
2 eggs                                           
via www.howsweeteats.com                                                                                      via www.allrecipes.com

Over medium heat, spray the pan with oil. Whisk the dry ingredients together with the wet ingredients until smooth. Spoon out 1/4 cup into the pan, and swirl to coat.

This is where it got a little tricky for us. The savory crepes were really thick and tiny. This was the biggest we could make our first one. So we added some milk to thin it out and they got better. Cook for 1-2 minutes on each side, flipping gently with a spatula.

While the second side cooks, fill part of the crepe with your toppings. This was the apple and brie crepe, which quickly became our favorite! In fact, I'm craving it right now...  Fold the crepe over once or twice and you're all set! Top the dessert crepes with some powdered sugar or drizzles of chocolate or caramel!

 What's a crepe night without champagne?? *Hey at least I didn't buy Andre. Movin' up in the world!*


~A

Pesto Caprese Pasta

They weren't kidding, this week has been crazy busy. Between interning at a local high school all day and then immediately going to my evening classes, I'm pulling 12 hour days! It's no wonder I'm already sick, and, unfortunately, I passed it along to the husband. So tonight for dinner, I wanted something fresh, simple, and easy on sore throat. I scoured the kitchen and this is what I came up with:

Since pasta is my typical go-to lazy dinner, and since I've been meaning to make a caprese salad with my poor, neglected basil plant, I decided to switch it up and combine them. 

First, I made the "salad" portion, so that it could marinate in the balsamic vinegar as long as possible. I halved the cherry tomatoes and the mozzarella balls, and removed the stems from the basil. I didn't count, but I probably had 20-30 large basil leaves. I tossed it all into a bowl of about 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar mixed with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper.

 Occasionally, I would stir up the salad while I cooked the pasta, to make sure it marinated evenly. You could skip this if you use a flatter dish. Add more balsamic if there isn't enough to go around. Now cook your pasta. I went with whole wheat rotini, but anything works. I'm in the habit of always cooking half the pasta box at a time for just my husband and I, so that there are some leftovers for lunches, so this recipes is based on that amount of pasta. Just double it for a full box.

 If you are using prepared pesto, take it out of the fridge at least 10 minutes early, so it can warm up and mix together again. Someday, I will make fresh pesto with my fresh basil, but today is not that day.

Drain the pasta and add the salad mixture. Be sure to strain out the excess vinegar first; I didn't and it made it a little soupy and brown, and the vinegar overpowered the pesto flavor. Mix it together while the pasta is hot, then add about 1/2 cup of pesto and stir to coat everything. Add more pesto if desired. Again, this is for half of a typical box of pasta, so alter the measurements to your preferences.

Ta-da! Yellow bowls were not my best choice for this photo, but there it is.

Pesto Caprese Pasta

*serves 3-4

6 oz Pasta

6 oz Mozzarella, preferably cherry sized, halved.

1 pint Cherry Tomatoes, halved

20-30 large basil leaves

2T Balsamic Vinegar

1/2 C Pesto

Kosher Salt & Freshly Ground Pepper to taste

In a medium bowl, mix vinegar, salt, and pepper with the tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil. Set aside.

Set out the pesto to warm. Prepare pasta as directed, then drain.

Drain the vinegar from the salad, then mix with the pasta. Stir in the pesto, and serve warm.


Enjoy! - A

"Here are the 7 reasons why I believe this year of your graduate program is harder than last year." 

This was told to us by our professor this week in our first day of class. So, naturally, I decided that finally starting my blog at the same time was a great idea! Let it be known that I never claim to make the smartest decisions...

I've been wanting to start a blog for a few years now, documenting my attempts to master various life experiences and Pinterest posts. One part lifestyle, one part journal, one part comedic relief as I, inevitably, fail at duplicating some recipes, crafts, etc...

Then came the dreaded first blog post. That's a scary blank page staring back at you! What if I'm not funny enough? What if it's lame? What if people make fun of me? What if no one reads it?!

Well, I've put it off long enough. I suppose it speaks to my progress in my counseling program that I'm learning to just stop giving a crap about how others may see me and to start living life for me. And I want to start a blog! So bear with me while I find time to write, and teach myself how to make this blog into what I want it to be!

-Audrey