Archive for February, 2017
My wanderings around my world this week started with…
Eating waffles and talking tech with fellow nerdgals at a Girl Develop It meetup.
An awesome start to the week.
… and then I went home and reheated waffles from our freezer, then topped them with fried eggs and bacon. Because Son wanted waffles too. 😅
Got The Pho Cookbook last week, so this week it’s time to make some pho!
Went for a walk on Valentine’s Day. Tried to take a photo of some pretty flowers. Instead got Son photobombing my photo. ðŸ˜
… got the photo of the flowers anyways.
Our aloe plant has gotten to be quite plump!
Pho success!
Sprouted palm tree seeds look like little pink bugs.
Itty bitty garden at the base of the palms.
Deceptively calm rain on leaves.
Meanwhile, I nearly got blown away (and definitely got soaked) on my walk home.
Current dinner: spinach + chickpeas + eggs, and then add radish kimchi. Super easy, oh so healthy, and really really tasty.
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Where are you wandering this week?
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Happy Valentine’s Day!
Whether you’re celebrating your sweetie, hanging out with your gal pals, or want to bring a treat into the office (because who doesn’t love cupcakes?), this week I’ve rounded up ten of our top last-minute Valentine’s Day treats from Fridgg.
For example, you could seduce your sweetie with these tasty oysters with chocolate and a saffron sauce!
These chocolate hazelnut truffles from Katherine of Gouda Monster are perfect for valentines or galentines!
This decadent dark chocolate and raspberry souffle from Serena of Foodful Life is sure to please!
This easy chocolate cherry banana bread from Joanne of Family Food Ideas is perfect to make for friends or family.
It wouldn’t be Valentine’s Day without something from Elizabeth of Sugar Hero! Her nutella pound cake petit fours are tasty and easy, especially if you use store-bought pound cake.
These nutella hearts from Stacie of Simply Stacie are totally sweet and super easy to make.
Another easy last-minute Valentine’s Day from Stacie of Simply Stacie – hugs and kisses rolls!
Take a shot at love with these fiery chocolate shots from MJ of MJ’s Kitchen.
These easy nutella cupcakes from Elizabeth of Sugar Hero! are so simple to make, they’re perfect if you need a last-minute Valentine’s Day treat!
Our top last-minute Valentine’s Day treat also comes from Stacie – since they’re made with jarred butter chicken sauce, these butter chicken hand pies are a breeze to whip up for a cute Valentine’s Day dinner!
I love butter chicken, so I was excited to have an excuse to try out these fun butter chicken hand pies.
Despite a slight mishap on the butter chicken side of things, once the butter chicken was made I found these to be super easy to make, and quite tasty!
The original recipe used jarred butter chicken sauce, while I made my own butter chicken from scratch and used that as the filling instead. If you’re looking for a quick last-minute treat, the jarred version may work better, but I urge you to try out the butter chicken recipe if you have more time – it’s definitely worth the extra effort!
Butter Chicken Hand Pies
Slightly adapted from Simply Stacie.
Ingredients
- 1/4 batch of butter chicken (save the rest for another meal, or you can make multiple batches of hand pies)
- 1 tbsp fresh cilantro, chopped
- 1 package of refrigerated pie crust dough (enough for two pies)
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tsp water
Cooking Directions
- Cook the butter chicken. When the chicken is finished, shred one of the pieces of chicken and mix it with a bit of sauce to moisten, then stir the cilantro into the shredded chicken.
- Preheat oven to 450°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Unroll both pie crusts and, using a heart shaped cookie cutter, cut out as many heart shapes as you can from the dough.
- Lay half of the hearts on the baking sheet. In the center of each heart, add about a teaspoon of butter chicken mixture. Place the remaining hearts on top to cover. Using a fork, press down the edges of each heart to seal.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the egg yolk and water. Using a pastry brush, brush the egg mixture on the tops of the hearts.
- Bake for 10 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve hot.
- Enjoy!
After a day filled with macarons, chocolate, tasty French food, and plenty of wanderings, we found dinner closer to home base.
We had walked by La Fontaine de Mars a few times already, as it’s on one of the little streets between our hotel and the Eiffel Tower.
When Son looked it up and found it had good reviews, it was an easy decision.
We were seated outside, which afforded us a nice view and a quiet meal. However, our table was practically in the street, which meant there were a few times we nearly thought we were going to get run over by a speedy passing motorbike or a car trying to squeeze down the narrow alleyway.
After perusing the English menu they keep on hand for tourists, Son decided on the confit canard (duck confit) – no surprise there.
Seriously, Son has had duck for every sit-down meal so far in Paris!
As for me, I got the Poulet aux Morilles (roasted chicken breast with morels and morel cream sauce). The chicken by itself was nothing special, but those morels! And that sauce! *swoon*
After dinner, we wandered just a bit more to walk off the meal, and go see the Eiffel Tower all lit up.
Paris is beautiful at night.
My wanderings around my world this week started with…
Roasting potatoes.
Layers.
Dips, chips, and the Super Bowl!
You know it’s all about the food here. Potato pinto bean tacos, and short rib tacos. Both were excellent, but the potato ones were my favorite.
That feel when you make something that looks really challenging and it turns out AMAZINGLY.
Best part of our Super Bowl party was this pup that snuggled in my lap the entire time. Do you think anyone would notice if I hide her away until everybody leaves? 🤔ðŸ˜
(Breakfast) taco Tuesday!
Time to make ALL THE PHO.
Kimchi sandwich… with shortribs. 😉
Found a new-to-us restaurant when the other restaurant we wanted to go to was waaaaay too packed. Now obsessed with this khao soi. It’s so good I was literally slurping the last bits of curry soup out of the bowl after I had eaten everything else…
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Where are you wandering this week?
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After a lovely lunch at Tourn’Bride, we set off to wander more.
Not even a minute after we set off, Son suddenly dragged me into a random patisserie on Rue Mouffetard – “We’re getting something here.”
Well! I’m certainly not going to complain when Son insists upon dessert.
After a quick browse through all the tasty-looking sweets at Les Chants de Blé (at the corner of Rue Mouffetard and Rue de L’Arbalète), we made our decision and then headed off to find somewhere to eat.
Jardin de Plantes fit the bill perfectly!
Gorgeous landscaping, and plenty of shaded benches were the perfect place to sit, try out some of the treats we bought, and people-watch for a while.
First, we sampled the eclair au café that we bought at the patisserie.
Unsurprisingly, it was fantastic.
Then we got into the chocolates we bought before lunch from Chocolat Mococha.
The passionfruit chocolate was incredibly tart, but quite tasty.
And of course we had to try the wasabi chocolate with sesame praline. We couldn’t taste the wasabi much, but the sesame was fantastic.
The Jardin de Plantes is lovely to walk through. It’s beautifully landscaped, and contains hundreds of different varieties of plants.
There’s also a huge greenhouse, which from the outside looks like it might contain an entire rainforest.
It looked like they required tickets to enter, so we passed on that this time.
Instead, we meandered around the rest of the Jardin de Plantes, and found… kangaroos!
Apparently there’s a small zoo attached to the gardens.
After wandering through the zoo, we made our way back to the river, where we took the Batobus back to the Eiffel Tower stop.
Before heading back up to our hotel room, we stopped at the bakery downstairs, and bought some more goodies.
Back up in our room, we sampled the pastries – the chocolate and vanilla eclairs were tasty, that canelle was a little weird, and the flan apricot was delicious.
(Vacation is a totally valid excuse to eat sweets before dinner.)
After emptying my bag of all the random souvenirs we picked up throughout the day (and, let’s be honest, resting and catching up on Facebook for half an hour)… it was time to be off for our next meal!
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