Bryant & Cooper

In honor of my mom's birthday today, we went out for a birthday steak dinner at one of our favorite places to celebrate things - Bryant & Cooper Steakhouse.

Appetizers:
Tuna Tartare
Crab Cakes

Entrees:
Bryant & Cooper Salad
Butternut Squash Ravioli
T-bone Steak (pictured in "Sides" section)
Cajun Ribeye

Sides:
Cream Spinach (our fav!)
Hash Brown Potatoes

Drinks:
Merlot
Whiskey Sour

Dessert:
We were too full for dessert!

Birthday Mama & Papa S

Me & Sis

Linguine w/ White Clam Sauce

Some relatives were in town one weekend and they went fishing at our local beach and came home with some {small} fish and an entire bag of clams. 

What do you do with clams? Make linguine with clam sauce. I didn't know the actual recipe for it, but decided to wing it.

Some chopped up clams, garlic, butter, some parsley, some salt and pepper later, and BAM! Dinner is served. There may or may not have also been some mojitos made with home grown mint leaves and Red Mango before the actual dinner =)

Pasta Salad

One of my favorite things to throw together for an impromptu BBQ party is this pasta salad. A neighbor gave my mom the recipe back when I was maybe still in Middle School?!?! Definitely not going to get into how many years ago that actually was...*ahem...

All it is, is: penne (I used whole wheat today b/c that's what we had in the house). a cucumber, tomatoes, a red onion, garlic, feta cheese, olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste. Might I add, the cucumber and tomatoes that I used today were from our very own garden =)

Cook the pasta (al dente of course!), chop everything else up, mix it all together, and voila! Meal. Game. Set. Match.

Check out what this bum was doing while she was supposed to be "helping" me

Fried Rice & Pie in Berlin

It was a rainy morning in Berlin...rather, I suppose by the time we woke up it was more like a rainy afternoon. Regardless of time, we were pretty spent from the touring and eating we did during the Doner Day before. So we decided to do some home cooking. Did we have rice? check. Garlic? check. Eggs? check.Tomatoes? no...Meat? no... supermarket? close enough. FIELD TRIP!!!

One of my favorite things to do when I visit another country is to go grocery shopping. Actually, that's one of my favorite things to do at home too...and let me just say, that grocery shopping on an empty stomach is a dangerous thing to do. So I get the directions for how to the local market, and I "suit up" (<3 NPH) in my hoodie, equipped with a canvas bag b/c it seems that every country charges for plastic bags except the USA, and head out.

I pick up what I need for making fried rice, and then start hunting for ingredients to make a version of Nestle's Mini Custard Fruit Tarts. I found the recipe online a few years ago, and made them for Thanksgiving when my cousin was visiting...he was such a fan, that I think I ended up making them into full pies instead of mini tarts at least 3 times that weekend. The best part is, the recipe is super simple and can be easily substituted with other ingredients. A few substitutions had to be made here because apparently they don't have graham crackers in Germany, and I had to take a stab at some of the other ingredients because, well, I can't read German.

Since I'm on dessert, I'm going to Tarantino it and work my way back from the end:

Preparing the crust...

Custard

Crust pre-bake

Crust post-bake w/ filling

Final product!

It's dessert time!

My little helpers hard at work - there's no such thing as a free meal!

The set-up and fried rice process & result:

Not the best fried rice I've ever made - which I'm going to chalk up to circumstance, BUT was at least passable. And dessert was a hit, which totally made up for it and gave us all the energy to embark on our adventures around Berlin afterwards.

The Breakfast Post #1

I've recently taken to taking pictures of my breakfasts at work in the mornings and posting them on G+, which has prompted a few comments that I should start a breakfast blog. I'm not sure that I could dedicate an entire blog to breakfast (though I do love breakfast - especially for dinner!), I figured I'd at least start by dedicating a post to some of the morning time meals that I've consumed in the past few weeks.

What started it all - red velvet, parsley and garlic, and some bread

Who doesn't love Trader Joe's? Delicious AND it makes me feel like I'm being healthy!

Won't make any pretenses that Ruffles are healthy...ridges or not. 

Was judged by a coworker for having quiche for breakfast, but I know they were just jealous.
From Nick's place on 39th & 7th.

Cappuccino Muffin, meet Chocolate Cupcake

An attempt to eat healthier after being admonished via G+ for not eating well balanced breakfasts...
...those may or may not be Sunchips peeking out in the background

**drool

McD's Sweet Tea, Kefir Yogurt (healthy!!!), Chocolate Sprinkles Donut, log of Sharp Cheddar Cheese w/ Almonds, and some bread

Unfortunately, all this eventually caught up to me, and I think my body started to hate me for filling it with so much random stuff and I've been trying to go back to normal breakfast things - like bagels (love bagels!) and oatmeal. But hey, it was fun while it lasted! Check back in for the breakfast post round 2 sometime in the near future!