Sunday Picture - Grow little seeds grow

I spent Saturday afternoon working on my little deck garden. Do you remember when the seeds had just sprouted? My how far they've come. A couple times today I walked out to "check" on them, and without fail every time I felt a huge smile come across my face.  So I thought for the Sunday Picture this week I would post a little tour of my growing garden.  There are...

2 kinds of green beans...

...lots of tomatoes, a little basil, and other herbs...

...4 kinds of tomatoes to be exact, here's the baby cherry...

...and loads of winter and summer squash, bibb lettuce, spinach and cucumbers.

Hope you all had a lovely weekend, I'll be back tomorrow with a different kind of lasagna.
alison

Sunday Picture - Tomatoes + Seedlings Wk 2

I spent most of the afternoon/evening today working with these tomatoes.  All 30 pounds of them!  Let's just say my freezer has a lot more room in it than it did this morning.  With rain in the forecast I decided it would be the perfect day to finally make the sauce I saved all these beauties for. It feels like ages ago when we harvested them last August.  When I just couldn't look at another tomato; of course I laugh now, because I can't wait for them to come back. In the mean time the sauce that I made today will have to hold us over for the next 5 or 6 months. I'll be back later in the week with the step-by-step process I used for turning these tomatoes into scrumptious sauce.

Also, couldn't resist this picture.  This week our seedlings literally seemed to jump out of their pods.  It felt like overnight we went from having them just barely creeping above the surface of the soil, to standing tall and reaching for the sun.  Watching the constant changes and growth makes me very happy!

Finally, I wanted to bring up the cookbook of the month.  I know we are a week in, but I've been cooking out of a new one this month and have a backlog of recipes to share.  In honor of Jamie Oliver's show "Food Revolution" and his very inspiring "TED Talk" from February, I decided to cook out of the one book I have of his, The Naked Chef.  I've used this cookbook intermittently over the past couple years but never really studied it like I have during the past couple weeks.


happy cooking this week.
alison

Sunday Picture - New Growth

Here is a first glimpse at our new seedlings. These went in the ground a week ago today and are so amazing to watch. Every day Matt and I check to see what new growth has come up. They are like our new little family. Hopefully this is just the beginning of a flourishing garden for the year.

happy cooking this week!
alison

Sunday Picture - Carrot Cake w/ Vanilla Frosting

The Sunday Pic on Monday...I know, I know. To make a long story short just as I was getting ready to post this lovely cake yesterday I lost my internet connection...until about 10 minutes ago. So here we are. I made this cake for a friend's birthday celebration over the weekend. 

Mind you this is exactly my 2nd tiered cake ever and the first was a 3 layers with green icing, lets just say I went BIG.  But this one needed to not only taste good but also be pretty.  Thankfully I have a lovely pastry chef friend who gave me an icing lesson that helped immensely.  The recipe for this Carrot Cake beauty was pulled from one of my favorite food blogs, Smitten Kitchen.  Although instead of making a maple syrup frosting as her recipe suggests, I used this vanilla one. 

I'll definitely hold on to this recipe as it is amazing! In fact I'm eating the last little piece of it now.


happy cooking this week! 
alison

Sunday Picture - Chocolate Salon

On Saturday Matt and I checked out the 3rd Annual Chocolate Salon in San Francisco.  It was much bigger than I imagined with chocolate galore, and all for tasting.  We quickly learned that we had to pace ourselves, but I still had enough chocolate to last me at least a couple days.  Here are several photos from the event.  It was so fun to try everything, and see businesses small and large showing off their goods. I was truly inspired by all the creativity and wonderful tastes I got to try. 

Back tomorrow with a recipe...
alison

Sunday Picture - Homemade Croissants

Today I'm just posting an inspirational picture.  Though some might look at this and think, oh that looks like a picture of croissants; to them I say, yes - isn't it grand!  I know, I'm kinda crazy about this sort of thing...but it was my first attempt at making croissants, and I'm so excited I just had to share.

I'm sure everyone has a recipe or idea that they want to try but are to overwhelmed to even go down that path, however, I'm here to tell you it is so worth the effort.  I've been wanting to make croissants from scratch for a long time, but I've always been turned off by the four (yes, really!!) pages of directions in the Tartine Bakery cookbook.  It was wonderful to share these with friends over brunch this morning, and the satisfaction of conquering the recipe was just an added bonus.  

I'll be back tomorrow with a recipe for Long-Cooked Broccoli.

happy cooking this week,
Alison