Dreary Daffodils Blog

Yeah yeah, I know. I’m off and on with my etsy shop but I do miss it. With all the time I put into Art Under Glass it made me homesick. I’ve been thinking about opening up an apothecary on etsy selling handmade soap and other such things. I buy all my soap on there anyway, I suppose joining the bandwagon would be inevitable. I don’t have the time or energy right now to start my soapy adventure so beads and designing cards witll have to suffice. So go check out my shop and buy something, I’m poor and need a new lens.

xoxoxo,

Mandy

Photo Journals, I’ve seen countless photographers do this and I figured the exercise would be useful to me as well. A couple of days ago it was incredibly foggy, more than I’ve ever seen in fact. Most fog I incounter is usually on the highways closer to the Great Salt Lake. But apprently today the lake creept past its usual territory into my Magna neighborhood and similar weather throughout Salt Lake County. 

Well it’s been snowing all day in Las Vegas. It’s up to 8 inches in some parts of the valley! Although it’s not uncommon for vegas to get snow but it usually melts before it hits the ground.  Our part of town didn’t get hardly any at all but if you watch the news it’s pretty funny. The news has canceled all of its other reports and its only reporting on the chaos that it is reeking upon the valley. hehe Vegas are pussies in snow. :D

I left Utah to get away from shit weather, oh well. 

Is is snowing anywhere crazy where you guys are at?

Yes yes, it’s been one of those weeks, and it’s only Monday. *sigh* To get my mind off of the whirling chaos that is my life I decided some cookie baking was in order. To compliment my fall flavored cookie endeavor, I decided I am in desperate need of a few (like five) cranberry vodkas. I would like to say I took some great pictures to do these cookies justice but unfortunately I have failed you. To be frank I was much more concerned about eating them. I was so absorbed in pumpkin ecstasy that my feeble mind was overpowered with nothing else but the cookie. So pictures were just not possible on my part, I’m sure you’ll understand once you have tasted the fare.  Joy the Baker is of course responsible for the recipe because she is made up of only a ball of energy mass of genus and probably sugar. She also has more control over the cookie’s power and has some lovely photos at her blog. You can get the recipe here: Pumpkin Butterscotch Cookies

Ok I know this blog was supposed to be multipurpose and yes I really do have a life outside of cooking. So I’ll focus real hard to post some other topics as well. 

Goodnight and mahalo,

Mandy

Macaroni and Tuna Salad 

Ok so unfortunately there really are no macaroni pictures involved in this post. I know, I got your hopes up only to crush them into the ground, for this I apologize. 

Since out of context is my middle name, I decided to cook something that rebels against the common cold weather food and made a palpable summer dish.

Ok so about 3 weeks ago I’ve started to have Winder Farms deliver fresh and delicious milk and produce to my house. Well my Dad’s house since I live in squalor in his basement, but none the less a girl has got to have good produce, squalor be damned. Oh and p.s. store bought milk from Smiths can go screw itself. Winder is way better in the sack. 

 Bad humor aside….

 Winder not only delivers milk and produce, they pretty much will bring you any staple food that you can buy at the store with the exception of a few things. I was perusing through their list the other week and noticed fresh fettuccine in there. I bought it out of curiosity, I’ve only ever had the dried kind in the box. 

 So I get my pasta on Friday and have a look at it. As I held the small 10 0z. container in my hand I couldn’t help but think that it’s soft texture and mellow yellow color was just simply pretty. I was holding a package of pretty fettuccine. Weird I know. I set it back in the fridge and had no idea what to do with it. The pasta intimidated me to be honest. Albeit it did scare me, I knew that this pasta was not to be taken lightly, it was destined for greatness. So I headed toward the computer to find the perfect, somewhat easy, recipe that would determine my fettuccine’s fate.  

 Of course the first place I looked to was a lovely woman by the name of Elise over on her food blog SIMPLY RECIPES.

 I knew I could trust her with my fettuccine, her good taste in food has yet to fail me. So I decided on this recipe: Fettuccine with Creamy Tomato Italian Sausage Sauce Recipe

 It was perfect, the recipe had all my favorite things in the world. And it had fettuccine in the title so everything worked out.

 The first thing I noticed was the shallots, I love shallots and become warm and fuzzy when a recipe calls for them. Shallots are from the onion family but way cooler because they for 1 are much milder than an onion with a sweeter taste and 2 they kick ass because their form is similar to garlic and that’s just neat.

 So I got on to putting together my meal, which I discovered took about the same effort as making a box of Kraft Mac and Cheese. Everything was cooked in the same pan, except the pasta of course. But it was incredibly easy.

 The result? I am now a true believer in fresh pasta. The difference is unexplainable, I simply do not have the proper words at my disposal to describe the unbelievable yumminess of that god damn fettuccine. And the even more mind boggling thing is that homemade pasta is probably even better! The dish was if I may say so absolutely delicious. Earl and my Dad were freaking out, I was freaking out, pandemonium soon followed.

 The only thing I strayed from in the recipe was instead of using half sweet and half spicy sausage, I went forth and just did all spicy. It was fantastic. Although a word of caution to non likers of spicy food, do what the recipe calls for, there was a considerable amount of heat with the way I did it.  

So that night ended in full bellied happiness and I now have a new easy and tasty dish into my rotation.

 Alright so I said I’d make food for V-day. I chose to make Chicken Marsala with Zucchini Fritters and Molten Lava Cakes. Wow. I was skeptical about this chicken business at first but I am pretty sure now I can never become a vegetarian (sorry Eric). The chicken was so good that when I took the first bite I was overpowered by a vision of me and my meal hand in hand jumping over Marsala cream coated rainbows with pancetta bits raining down upon us. And I’m not even going to try to explain the fritters, their deliciousness was unspeakable. And the molten cake? I messed it up entirely, don’t even ask, it still hurts.

I only manged to snap shots of the Chicken for those who like their eyes to overheat by nearly pornographic pictures of saucy wonderness. For the rest of you, I don’t apologize, I am not ashamed of my love for cramming yummy food down my throat and then taking shameless pictures of the whole spectacle. 

Valentine’s Day isn’t so bad after all…

This recipe was inspired by Elise over at Simply Recipes, well it’s pretty much her recipe but I made a few change to suit my needs. When I first made this I couldn’t find pancetta at my local grocer and I didn’t have time to go up town so I used a high quality bacon instead, but if you can get pancetta I recommend going with that. I also upped the cream by about 5000 percent because apparently I hate the taste of Marsala wine unless it’s deluded with creamy goodness.