Yucca Fries

My friend Chantale introduced me to these. She told me I would love them. She knows me well! Ever since trying them with her, I have dream about Yucca Fries. They are so good and even better then French fries, I would have to argue. Last night I met up with some friends at Guantanamera, this awesome Cuban Restaurant that has great food and drinks and live music!! I ordered some. They were amazing as always!

Hanover Day!

I went home for a short visit and got to celebrate Hanover Day! The main journey home was for the annual Hanover 5K. This year it was the best yet! I talked a bunch of people into doing it and there were some other familiar unexpected faces there as well! After a great race, mom and I went to check out the Hanover Day festivities. Basically it was just a bunch of vendors set up in Sylvester field. The main highlight was hula hooping. Mom even tried and our neighbor Jackie also joined in too. I was quite intrigued by this Flatbread Pizza company's oven they brought in for the event. Check it out:

City of Sisterly Love

My sister now lives in Philly. Score! Another reason to jump on a bus and go down there. I spent the day with her yesterday and had my share of some lovely eats. She brought me to Yogorino, which is an Italian take on Pink Berry. It was quite good. They had lots of fun more European-esque toppings. They have location all over the world and they chose to put there first US location in Philly! Go Philly!



I got a white chocolate sauce and chocolate candies. The candy was an impulse decision. I kind of wanted to try the meringue crumbles, but then I thought my dish would be weirdly too white and could use some color. I probably should have gone with my usual sprinkles or copied Neana and got chocolate shavings. The candies just tend to get hard from the cold ice cream and I don't like that.


Neana got the pistachio sauce and chocolate shavings. I tried a bite. It was interesting, but I'm not really into pistachio too much.


After a long day of walking around and apartment hunting we need to unwind, so we stopped by El Vez, a favorite of many of my favorite people in life (Annie and my mom!)




We got El Vez classic margaritas and an order of Nacho Mamma. This really hit the spot! Perfect treat for a warm summery afternoon!

Milkshake heaven

So I've already posted about Bareburger, but I can't resist posting again. I dined there last night with Brittany and we have Groupon to thank for a smashing deal! They work with local artisans and sustainable farmer to provide customers with the best organic and quality ingredients. And I am a returning customer, so I will back up the tastiness of their food! Oh, and they also have a bear as their mascot, which I like.

I got the cubby meal. They didn't have an age limit written, so no one was stopping me from getting this portion. I had a veggie burger, with fries, apple slices, and carrots. This is still my fave veggie burger I've had thus far. Had one you think could live up to it? Please let me know!

I was consumed with excitement when my milkshake came that I was unable to take a picture until it was all gone. There once was a peanut butter milkshake inside this cup! I had died and went to peanut butter heaven. Having this in house pays off too, because you get the silver cup filled with an extra portion. I really feel like you get double as much as when you do take out!

My night of fun did not end there. Brittany suggested we continue on to Sweet Afton. Here we tried out the Spicy Cherry Margarita. It was made with a habanero infused tequila and man could you feel the heat! Spicy drink ever!

Suzy Homemaker bakes some bread.

My day off today consisted of the following: baking, cooking, sewing, and cleaning. And I never even had the pleasure of taking Home Ec!

I had a date to hang out with Chantale, but she got an awesome freelance gig and needed to postpone. Sooooooo I decided to catch up on some sewing projects, as well as make some homemade whole wheat bread! Two year ago I got a big urge to make bread and suggested that mum and I make some since I never had before and really wanted too. She then informed me she used to make bread all the time. I racked my brain, but couldn't recall this EVER happening!....... Turns out this was when she had more free time, pre-children. Anyways, making bread is super fun and I have made it occasionally since then. I have yet to try other variations, but this one is solid and classic, and allows for a week of scrumptious sandwiches and toast.

Homemade just always taste better!

Here is the recipe:

Whole Wheat Bread

Directions:
1. Combine:
- 1 package of yeast
- 1/4 cup warm water
( This can be set aside and the yeast will do its thang!)

2. In a large mixing bowl, combine:
- 2 1/2 cups hot water
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 3 teaspoons of salt
- 1/4 cup shortening

3. After wet ingredients are combined in the bowl, add in:
- 3 cups of whole wheat flour
- 1 cup of white flour

4. Next pour in the yeast mixture and stir everything up. (At this point you are still mixing with a fork or other utensil.)

5. Add in approximately 4 more cups of white flour, 1/2 cup at a time. After about two more cups the dough has gotten thicker and needs to be mixed with your hands. (I only added 3 and 1/4 more today. At that point the dough was in ball form and didn't really want anymore flour)

6. Move the dough to a clean surface for kneading. Knead for 10 minutes until ball is smooth.

7. Shape ball and place in a lightly greased bowl. Turn once to grease entire surface. Cover with a towel and let it rise for 1 1/2 hours.

BREAK

8. Punch down the dough! Then divide it in half and shape it into two balls. Cover them and let rest for 10 minutes.

9. Shape into loaves and place into 2 lightly greased bread pans and let rise for another 1 1/4 hours.

BREAK

10. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes

11. ENJOY!

Now I have plenty of carbs to load up on for my race tomorrow!

Big Day of Eating!

What better way is there to spend a Sunday then touring around eating lots of delicious food? Alice, Jessie and Nate joined me for this day excursion. To start we stumbled upon a little candy store called, the Sweet Life. I indulged in some marshmallows dipped in chocolate on a stick which were quite yummy. Then it was on the Essex Street Fair which had food vendors galore. Everything looked super amazing. I wish I could have tried even more!

I tried out a risotto ball by Arancini Bros. We sat on the grass and had a risotto ball picnic! I went for the spinach and ricotta. Might have been one of the best things I've ever ate!

Next on the menu was a Mexican popsicle. This was no Las Paletas, but still tasty! I tried something a little different and went for the mango chili flavor. It was different, but quite good.


Next stop was the South Street Seaport, which I had never been to before. It is a really neat area overlooking the water with views of the Brooklyn Bridge and Governor's Island and tons of shops and restaurants. I kinda felt like I was at Faneuil Hall in Boston! The main reason for our visit was to try Soul Daddy finally!

After a day filled with eating I wasn't hungry enough to go with a full meal, so I opted to just try a couple sides.

I tried the braised kale and cornbread waffles, which were both very good. Alice tried the pulled pork sandwich and Jessie and Nate tried the cheese grits. All left pleased and happy!

We also stopped by the Jewish Chinese Festival. Here they had a little station where you could make your own hallah bread! They provided you with a balls of dough which you braided and put in your on personal tin to bring home to bake!

Not the prettiest braids, but tasty none the less!

Simple things are sometimes the best things.

Strawberries are in season and are looking oh so nice! I bought some at the grocery store this week. After making my lemon poppy seed muffins, I had some heavy cream in the fridge. These two things combined meant whipped cream was in order.

Such a simple delicacy, but oh so amazing!

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins!

I have so many recipes I need to back track and share, but today I tried something totally new: Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins (My second favorite muffin out there!)

Number 1 being corn. I will soon make my cornbread and share it with you; the recipe that is. This was quite the process taking me a good 6 months and many, many batches to find. There are far too many bad cornbread recipes out there and someone needs to police recipe boards and rid the internet of these! I haven't made any lately, mainly because I am out of cornmeal. I usually have all the other ingredients, so when I have stock of cornmeal, I see it sitting up their in the cupboard and it entices me to make a batch.

Lately, I have fallen into buying muffins when I'm on my way to work. West Side Market has these mini muffins that are so cute and I just can't resist buying one on my way past the bakery to the registers. I don't know what has come over me; I'm usually more for making things homemade and not spending my money out on food, but I have been more impulsive lately and keep buying them. This must stop immediately, so back to baking I must go!

When I came across this posting, I decided I HAD to make lemon poppy seed muffins, since I had never attempted before. Thanks to Ms. Humble this will not be a trial of many attempts. This came out some amazing! Next time I will make it in loaf form and top it off with glaze as she did, but for this batch I wanted to make muffins to have for breakfast the next couple days and the glaze-like frosting would makes it a little more dessert-like and I really should be cutting out some dessert, not adding more starting at 6:30 am!

Her recipe has measurement in grams so I had to do some research and figuring to find the US friendly equivalencies.

Here is the recipe:

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

Ingredients:

2 cups cake flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
½ cup + 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted and cooled to slightly warm
¼ cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest (roughly two large lemons)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
3 tablespoons poppy seeds
4 eggs
5/8 cup granulated sugar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter muffin pan (I made larger muffins, in a 6 muffin pan, and the recipe made 10 muffins)
2. Mix together the cake flour, baking powder and salt, then set aside.

3. In a different bowl, combine the melted butter, cream, lemon juice, zest and poppy seeds and set aside.

4. Get one more bowl dirty and beat the eggs and sugar together with a mixer. Beat until they are very fluffy and light in color (I was beating for aprox. 6 minutes)
5. Fold in flour mixture to eggs mixture until just combined.
6. Add a little bit of this mixture to the wet poppy seed mixture to lighten it up before pouring it in.
7. Finally combine all ingredients.
8. Scoop mixture into pan and slide them into the oven.

9. Let bake for approximately 20 minutes!

Second helping after proper cooling:

I can't not try something right out of the oven. I get very impatient waiting for things to cool!