Weekend Worthy

If you remember from last year, I love Fall baking -especially when it comes to apples. However, this one has nothing to do with apples since we haven't gone apple picking yet.  But it is baking and it is perfect for the weekend!  It's Toll House cookie pie! Just by the name you know its good.

Ingredients

• 1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell *
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, softened
• 1 cup (6 oz.) NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels
• 1 cup chopped nuts

• Directions

  PREHEAT oven to 325° F.
  
  BEAT eggs in large mixer bowl on high speed until foamy. Beat in flour, sugar and brown sugar. Beat in butter. Stir in morsels and nuts. Spoon into pie shell.
  
  BAKE for 55 to 60 minutes
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Have a happy Fall weekend!!!!

Get Crackin

Ready for another recipe? This one is so fun and freezer-friendly. They are the siblings to McDonalds Egg and Cheese McMuffins, except a bit better for you! All you need are a dozen eggs, english muffins, and cheddar cheese.  Preheat your oven to 350. Crack your eggs directly into a muffin tin and bake for 20 minutes. While the eggs are baking slice your muffins and toast with the eggs for a about 10 minutes. One these are done, pop them out (butter the muffin if desired) and freeze together on the baking sheet for about an hour. (You need to freeze them before assembling them or they will get soggy when you reheat them.) Take them out and assemble your egg and cheese mcmuffin - I also put salt and pepper and wrap individually in aluminum fold and place in freezer. 

Whenever you decide to eat them just heat them in the oven for about 30 minutes. They can be heating while you're getting ready for work!

(Yes, we have ice trays)

Carrots and Bread??

Remember the pic from yesterday with that slice of bread next to the chowder? That slice was none other than Carrot Bread. Yep, that's right - carrot. I made a loaf and froze half of it so we can pull it out when we need a quick bread to go with a meal or just even a quick breakfast. Alright, here's the recipe...

8 medium carrots

1 1/3 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon kosher salt

6 tablespoons butter, completely softened

1 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1/3 cup buttermilk (or 1/3 cup milk mixed with 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice which is what I did b/c I didn't have buttermilk)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease pan

Peel and slice 3 of the carrots into 1/4-inch rounds. Bring a medium saucepan of salted water to a boil, add the carrots and cook until soft, about 10 minutes. Drain. Let cool, and then puree in the food processor or blender. Coarsely grate the remaining 5 carrots. Set both the pureed carrots and grated carrots aside.

Put the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, mix the butter and sugar until smooth. Stir in the eggs one at a time until combined. Stir in the buttermilk, carrot puree and grated carrots. Add the flour mixture and mix until well-blended.

Spread the batter in the prepared pan. Bake about 55-65 minutes.

The next few days I'm going to be sharing some recipes that I made over the weekend that are just plain tasty and perfect for this Fall weather! The first is a yummy chicken and corn chowder. You can freeze this as well for those future snowy days where it's too cold to go to the store, but we're not talking about that yet. So here goes...

Ingredients:

• 6 ears of fresh corn or 1-30 ounce can corn and 1-15 ounce can cream corn
• 6 slices bacon, chopped
• 3 medium potatoes (like Idaho potatoes)
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 3 cups milk (I used 1% since that's all we had - worked great)
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 2 teaspoons Old Bay seasoning
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 small can chopped green chiles
• 2 cups roasted chicken, shredded 
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:
In a large stock pot, fry the bacon pieces until crisp. Remove from the pan, leaving half of the drippings, and set aside. OR you can microwave the bacon and still use half the drippings which is waaaay easier and faster. This is the method I always use with bacon!


Peel and chop the potatoes into bite sized chunks.Place the potatoes into the stock pot and cook over medium heat for 2 or 3 minutes.


Sprinkle in the flour and cook, stirring constantly, for about 1 minute.

Pour in the milk, chicken stock, Old Bay, thyme, cayenne, salt, and pepper, stirring well. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally.

Reduce heat to low and simmer for 12-15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Add corn, chicken, bacon, and green chiles. Cook over low heat until heated through, about 5 minutes. If you want to top it off with some cheddar cheese be my guest!

Wow! I'm finally back from my travels to Florida (watching FL beat TN - sorry hubs) and Austin. They were both such fun trips. I'm also not sure where to start to share all the fun things we did and visited so I think I'm just going to do mostly pics. 

I only have a few pics of Florida but let me just say that it was so much fun being home and with the entire family. We went to the Gator v TN game (our household rival games) and of course the Gators won.

This pic was before the game - confidence!! 

We got Krispy Kreme doughnuts after like we have since I was about 4 years old.  (the sign proves how old it is)

Come Monday, mom and I ventured over to Austin for some jewelry buying. And boy did I find some beauties! I've already made a few pieces which will be coming on the website soon!

More....

We had some awesome recommendations on places to eat during our visit and Ranch 616 did not disappoint! If you're in Austin or visiting, you should go to Ranch 616 and if possible sit outside next to cactus.

Cactus

We ventured on South Congress Ave and did some vintage shopping (mom bought me a vintage leather skirt) as well another great meal. 

Some more vintage shopping at Uncommon Objects. Again, highly suggest this shop! Also, as you're shopping down S Congress you can pick up a vintage store map which will help get you to all the good stops! Leave enough time because there are a lot of them.

One store we couldn't pass up was the old soda fountain - I could have stayed here for hours but mom and I both forced ourselves to leave

We had lunch here and it was great as it was recommended! 

We ate at Z Tejas for dinner and sat outside on the top balcony. It was just perfect! It was a great girls trip with some successful jewelry buying! Looking forward to another trip next year...

Sorry for not posting yesterday but I couldn't turn my computer on. However, I have a nice tasty treat for you today! I found this jem on Pinterest and had to make it right away! Of course, its pumpkin based. It is Fall, ya'll. So all you need is one box of yellow cake mix and one can of pumpkin filling. Here's the kicker - just mix those two ingredients together, put in muffin tin and bake at 350. That's right, no eggs, butter, oil, etc. Just those two ingredients! Have fun and no luck needed. :)

I also am leaving for Florida tomorrow for the Florida vs Tennessee game. (Its our family rivalry with a twitter war to prove it.) And then will be flying straight to Austin for a jewelry buying trip. So I'll be back blogging next Thursday. I hope yall have a great weekend!

Football and Food

If you looked through the mass of pictures in yesterday's blog post you probably wouldn't think we did anything this past weekend besides walk and around and take pictures. However, we did take some time to fit some football in on Saturday! We are quite the football fans and create quite the setup - well Hubs creates quite the setup with his IT skills. So after we had watched the most important SEC games we thought it would be fun to have some friends come over for the night games. However, I didn't have time to cook dinner but still wanted to have enough finger foods to replace a big dinner. I looked on Pinterest and found an easy fast ham and cheese crescent roll sandwich. I figured these sandwiches with a few other dips would do the part. These would also be great for toddlers to help with.

Our three "tvs" with 3 different games

A couple of packages of Pillsbury crescent rolls, Ham sandwich meat, slices of cheese - your choice

Roll those puppies up with the point down

And of course a blueberry pie

9/11 Special Memorial

After our second 9/11 here in NYC and living only 3 blocks from ground zero I have an utter appreciation and respect for those who gave their lives to save more of ours. They are true heroes and I thank each one of you. Since I would never be able to describe everything we saw and felt from Friday night Security car checkpoints to Saturday Freedom Rider traffic jams until Sunday night seeing the Tribute in Light all in downtown Manhattan I'll let you all look through our extensive Picasa album.

As we were sitting in our apartment watching 9/11 footage we heard bagpipes down on the street. We ran downstairs and ended up witnessing some of the Port Authority men playing bagpipes in the middle of our blocked off street before finally marching down Church St to St Paul's. If you want to see more videos search spencerrebecca1.

Happy Friday! I'm ready for a little weekend break. The trunk show was a success and so much fun to do up here in NYC! Thanks again, A. We had a great turnout of people. There were also some yummy treats, drinks and a view to die for. A has a wonderful balcony which we relaxed on towards the end of the show while taking in the skyline and wondering about all the people shopping like madmen at Fashion's Night Out. (Next year I'm participating and shopping like a madman - can't wait to see the highlights) Thanks to everyone who came! I hope everyone now has a wonderful weekend. Although, I hope no one goes without at least taking a moment to remember all the families who lost loved ones 10 years ago and those who gave their lives during the attacks. 

We forgot to take pics yet again so this is at the end of the show... oops

NYC Show

I must say this year has been quite a slow year in terms of trunk shows for SMD. I've had a few outside of the city but none here in New York. Moving to a new place just takes some time to get acclimated. Well, it's been over a year now which means I'm acclimated! So tonight is my first trunk show in NYC. There have been a ton of people invited, thanks to one of my dear friends so I'm excited to see the turnout and meet some new people. I'm ready to show off the Fall collection and Team jewelry! I hope to have pics tomorrow but so far I'm horrible at taking pics while the show is taking place. Fingers crossed!

Fall Obsession

Since Labor Day has come and gone I consider this the start of Fall (although Hubs keeps telling me otherwise.) Especially since today's high is going to be around 73 degrees! Labor Day weekend was a great start to kickoff Fall. I was down in Nashville visiting my in-laws which made it that much more fun watching the first weekend of football down in the heart of SEC nation! Go Gators and War Eagle! We grilled out Saturday night, which is exactly what should happen during football season.And while we were shopping for dinner we found none other than the great seasonal pumpkin beer! That means it really is the beginning of Fall! I love this time of the year. Now that the Fall has arrived it's time to start the Fall baking. And that is exactly what I did yesterday. I made pumpkin bread, while drinking a pumpkin beer. I'll be making something else pumpkin today although I haven't made up my mind as to what it might be...there's just too many good recipes out there.  Ahhh, the hard choices that go with Fall...

The first pumpkin flavors of the year

Pumpkin Bread, which I had to try

Daddy-O and Little Man at the Gator Game

Car thermometer down in Nashville - someone forgot to tell it Fall has arrived

Hubs had been traveling and working until 2 in the morning this week.  So we decided that before we part ways yet again this weekend we needed a date pronto. So Hubs got off a bit early last night and we took a walk up to the West Village for dinner at Extra Virgin. I have wanted to try this place for a year now but never got around to it since I would get distracted by all the other restaurants. However, the reviews and recommendations by friends were right! This little spot is most definitely a go to spot for the future. Check out the menu and then get yourself there. But beware, they don't accept reservations so go early and sit outside on the sidewalk. 

We also went to the new neighborhood jazz spot after dinner, called Silver Lining and will be going back since it had that cool jazzy vibe (with live music.) I tried taking a pic but it was too dark so you'll just have to go and see for yourself. 

Light and Fresh

I've had a lot of time on my hands since last Thursday when Hubs left and Irene came. (Hubs finally was able to make it back to the city yesterday) So during the stormy weekend I decided to make up a "light" recipe since it was just for my liking. It is quite Summery and fresh. Whole Foods was having a sale on wild bay scallops so I picked up 1/2 a pound. I also picked up a tomato at the farmer market earlier that day. Then I already had spinach, linguine, and garlic at home. I combined all those ingredients plus some seasonings and got this pretty little dish...

Here is how it really goes:

Take above ingredients plus olive oil (you can add some butter as well) salt, pepper, and basil. Saute minced garlic in oil/butter in a skillet while cooking pasta. Wash and dry scallops and season generously. Add scallops and tomato to the garlic and cook on both sides approximately 2-3 minutes each. Let simmer for about 8-10 mins. Now add the spinach to the pasta and pour sauce over so the spinach wilts. Again, this is a light meal!!