Recipe blog by Adrianna Adarme
Last weekend I stayed with my lovely friends of mine and we had an all-out cook fest. First, we grilled up some fish kabobs. Yum town. Then we drank one too many of these margaritas. I would like to tell you I regret this, but the fact is, I don’t. You should never, ever regret your margaritas.
{ 11 comments }
I got a little carried away on this one. See, my original idea was just to make regular cinnamon rolls from scratch. Not because no one on the planet has never done this, but because I haven’t. I felt pretty proud of myself. Then I thought it might be really nifty to add pecans as a salute to the upcoming holiday season. Pecans are 99% guaranteed to make almost anything better.
But see, I really wanted those pecans to be covered in sugar, preferably dripping down the side of my cinnamon rolls. A caramel sauce might do the trick, except now things were getting little too complicated. After all, caramel can be kinda tricky to make, and I don’t always get it right, unlike some people.
{ 13 comments }
It’s fall! Summer was great, but it’s time for something new. I’m not sure what it is about the fall air, but it makes me feel adventurous. So guess what we’re going to make today? Homemade ravioli! Without eggs! Or a pasta maker! We’re doing this all by hand! Don’t freak out, this is totally gonna work out fine. Seriously, it’ll be delicious.
OK, let’s do this.
First, you add exactly one cup of hot water to exactly 2 ½ cups of flour. Resist the urge to add eggs; I know it’s probably difficult.
Stir that up with a spoon or your hands until you have a nice little dough ball. Allow to sit for a few minutes so it can cool down a bit. Now separate this into two balls. See? We’re doing so well! [click to continue…]
{ 38 comments }
Sometimes things don’t always go as we planned. I had planned to watch “The Wizard of Oz” at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. I had even called all my friends, cooked up some recipes, scheduled a time to meet, loaded up the car and driven all the way to Hollywood just to have a picnic in the cemetery. However, when we turned the corner and were preparing to enter, we were met by this:
The photo doesn’t really do it justice, but basically the entire city of Los Angeles had the same thoughts that we had. And unfortunately for us, they had the idea about an hour sooner, and we didn’t make it inside. Yeah, it was a bummer. There are few things sadder than having a picnic meal and nowhere to picnic.
Luckily, I’m blessed to have flexible and endlessly enthusiastic friends. We took our picnic dinner and headed to a teeny tiny park in Universal City. We sat on blankets and drank wine, ate our food and watched the sunset go down. It was good, even without the red slippers or munchkins.
{ 6 comments }
Looking for a new job is scary. Mainly because interviews are scary. You dress up in uncomfortable clothes that you hope make you look “professional,” then march into some unfamiliar office to have a conversation with someone you’ve never met. And not just any conversation, it’s a conversations about your overall skills and value as a person. I normally spend most of the interview trying to make sure that I don’t smile too much, and worried that my armpit stains are going to start to show-an unfortunate side effect of my nervousness is that I begin to sweat profusely. It definitely doesn’t make going to interviews any easier.
So then, after I’ve babbled on to the woman or man sitting in front of me about how I would be happy to mow their lawn on the weekends if they would only give me this job, I get up, walk out, and immediately begin to kick myself for things that I did or didn’t say. It’s brutal, tortuous, and just plain awful. The minute after an interview I need comfort, and can only think of getting home, changing into yoga pants and spending the remainder of the day watching Sex and the City DVDs while drinking iced coffee.
{ 11 comments }
There are two clear types of holiday recipes. There are the time-tested kind, the ones that have been made over and over again, and will always be around because 1) everyone loves them and 2) the person making the recipe could do it with their eyes closed and one hand tied behind their back. There are also the newer kinds of recipes, those that are maybe a little more modern, with unusual ingredients and were probably found in a magazine or, ahem, a food blog.
This recipe is hands-down an example of the first type. My mother’s cheese dip graces pretty much every holiday party she attends in December, it is a rare occasion when she’s able to bring any leftovers home. This is the kind of appetizer that you snack on before dinner, and then return to when you’ve finished dessert. It’s the kind that you can’t stand in front of for more than 5 seconds without compulsively piling some on a cracker, until you’re wondering where all the crackers went and why you feel so full all of a sudden.
{ 6 comments }
It’s a sage-filled Thanksgiving here at A Cozy Kitchen! I swear, Adrianna and I did not plan on both making dishes that include sage, but hey, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, right?
For all of my childhood, one of the greatest moments at Thanksgiving was when the sweet potato casserole that my aunt made was pulled from the oven and added to the epic spread of food. It evolved a bit over the years, first being topped with toasted mini marshmallows, and eventually progressing to a candied nut topping. It didn’t matter to me what you topped it with though, only that sweet potatoes were about to be consumed.
{ 10 comments }
Aren’t you glad that bathing suit season is over? It can’t be a mere coincidence that the holidays are not only filled with decadent desserts that you only eat once a year, but also big, baggy sweaters that hide away any extra inches those foods bring with them. Just another reason to have not just one, but two pieces of this insanely good pie. Actually, if want to go ahead and eat the whole thing, I really couldn’t blame you. And I promise not to tell a soul.
{ 10 comments }
For a long time I’ve had a love-hate relationship with granola bars. My idea of the perfect granola bar is something chewy, delicious, not too sweet, and that serves as a satisfying snack. I always want to like the store-bought ones, but time and again they disappoint me.
Every few months I’ll be in a grocery store and will wander past a large display of some new variety of granola bars and will then somehow convince myself that these are the bars I have been looking for all my life. Ten minutes later, I’m in the checkout line with a basket filled with granola bars, only to get home and discover that these are no different than any other bar I’ve ever had. They’re either bland or too sweet and I still feel hungry after eating 5 of them.
{ 4 comments }
Sometimes I decide to cook something because it’s a recipe I’ve done a million times and I know that it’s going to taste amazing, like cheddar & pinto bean patties. Sometimes it’s because I see a recipe in a book, magazine, or blog and am immediately compelled to give it a try, like Smitten Kitchen’s pasta with goat cheese. Then, I have the days when I realize that I’ve had that box of couscous in my cupboard for a year, a YEAR, and by George, I’m going to do SOMETHING with it. That’s when I make things like Couscous Salad with Cherries.
{ 8 comments }
