Green, Green: Kitchen Sink Salad and a Grasshopper

My healthy cooking magazine continually says to eat more greens and, particularly to include a variety of greens in the diet. Tonight, I took their excellent advice and along with my salad had several grasshopper cocktails. They are delicious and so very pretty.

Grasshopper Cocktail: 1 part creme de menthe, 1 part creme de cacao, 1 part cream. I always make it with 1/2 part cream and it's much more minty which I prefer.


Look at the lovely new martini glass. I think it looks very vintage.


A silly salad with more toppings than lettuce. That's the way to make a salad!

Little Tokyo Pals

I've realized fairly recently that I never posted photos of the little souvenirs that Matthew and I brought back from our trip to Japan. I know that I have had about 6 months to do a series of cute little souvenir posts like I did after our trip to England but I guess it just hadn't occurred to me until now. We didn't really bring back as many fun, cutie tchotchkes from Japan; it sounds crazy considering that Japan is the land of cute plastic toys(Hello Kitty, San-x, lucky cats) but we can find so much of that for sale in the US as well.

Here are a few photos of my favorite little pals that hitched a ride in our suitcases.


This little octo is from the Tokyo Sealife park. He is very cute and not so useful. But very sweet to look at and soft to squeeze.


Hello! he says. Please don't eat me!


This little turtle is functional as well as cute. See the little hole in the middle of his shell? a stick of incense fits in there perfectly. I use him to hold the wonderful coffee scented incense that a friend sent to me for my birthday. It makes the whole apartment smell like roasting coffee.

I think this turtle wants to go on a little walk. This is the first time I've let him outside to go exploring.


Walkin' along, walkin' along. tum dee dum, dee dum...


Don't hurt your self little turtle, that mossy spot looks slippery and remember that it rained today!


Oh little turtle! you made it safely past the mossy bit only to get stuck in a potted cactus, oh dear! I think I'd better carry you the rest of the way.

Where do you want to go?


A ha! on top of the post, to catch the last rays of sun before it sets. What a nice way to end the day.

simple, cheerful kabobs

Due to having bought a giant, two and a half pound beef tenderloin for a recipe, I had a few funny bits of beef turning grey in the fridge. These were the pieces from the end and the "oopsie" cuts from trimming(hacking, really) away the silver skin (any butcher would have cried to see my incompetence). The tenderloin is such a tender and highly prized cut that I didn't want to keep it around until it finally went bad and then throw it away, as I do with so much of the food that I buy. But, for the same reason, it's hard to just use it in any old recipe like stir fry or stew because it's so very tender and doesn't need to have the life cooked out of it like most of the beef I buy. So, I made Kabobs!

In my little heart of hearts, I adore really tender kabobs and it's something that I never seem able to make with the extra cheap stew meat that I usually buy.



Once I'd decided to make beef kabobs I needed to find some vegetables to string on the skewers with the beef. I desperately needed to use up the little cherry tomatoes that were wrinkling up like raisins in the fridge and, honestly, once refrigerated, tomatoes should always be cooked. I added a few canned artichoke hearts for color and flavor, and thought the little kabobs looked ridiculously cheerful. Cheerful enough for a picture.

Easter critters

Just a few little easter critters that I encountered during the past week. I meant to post these before easter but I kept forgetting about them unless I was very much not in a situation to write a blog post, at work, lying in bed trying to fall asleep, drinking...the list goes on.

I know that I've posted photos of moonstruck truffles before, but I don't think I've posted the Easter variety before. They are squealingly cute:


A wee brown bunny with a heart shaped nose and sweet whiskers.


Little pink piggy. His look tells me he knows he's destined to be eaten.


It's like a truffle version of Shaun the Sheep(none of my customers knew what I was talking about)


The petite chocolate easter egg. So delicately decorated.

Bonus Picture!


A baby squirrel who likes to crawl around in the pocket of the gentleman who rescued him from the chomping crow. This baby squirrel was very soft with tiny feet. I got to hold and pet him and he was one of the sweetest little creatures I've ever met. So fun!

yes, more bread. I know i'm crazy.

Honestly, I do things other than baking bread; in fact, I haven't made much in the way of bread for the past month (I wonder if that's why I haven't posted much in the past month, as well? Huh.). This newly acquired ability to easily bake fresh bread is still just so fun and exciting for me, exciting enough that I primarily post photos of the finished product, loaves that magically work perfectly every time. It's still so astounding.



This loaf is made of olive oil dough and because Matthew's favorite type of bread is artisan style olive bread, I tossed in a few shriveling olives that we needed to use up. I supplemented two unrecognizably old castelvetrano olives and five sun-dried, herbed olives with pimento stuffed cocktail olives. Perhaps this was an odd combination, but I liked it and could have eaten the entire loaf of bread for dinner, if not for the vegetarian chili that I made to go with the bread.


Close up of the juicy olives and nice crumb

I really liked the extra moist, fine crumb from this particular bread and assume that the olive oil helps provide the extra moisture. This bread holds up very well to slicing and because of that fact, along with the addition of olives, this is great sandwich bread. Or, at least I hope so, since Matthew has a ham and smoked gouda sandwich on freshly baked olive bread for lunch tomorrow.

And, I promise I'll take a good long break from posting bread photos.

tiny felt roses

A selection of darling little hand-crafted felt and pearl bead roses that my friend Clare made for a baby shower. She gave me a couple handfuls of them and I just adore them. What shall I do with them? I don't know. Tumble them atop old books and take photos of them? sounds good!

Visiting Friends

Matthew and I took a short little trip to Las Vegas this weekend and, I have to say, it's kind of funny that when ever I tell people "I'm going to Las Vegas this weekend," they get that little gleam in their eyes and say "oh, wow, have fun!" Of course, the closest we got to partying was eating giant bowls of Chocolate Mousse with friends and hanging out with some of the cutest kids I've ever met.


Lynnea on the hike at Red Rock.


We thought it was the children's discovery trail but it turned out to be quite a strenuous hike. The Kids did amazingly on a much longer than expected hike.

We had such an easy, relaxing time; my friend Clare cooked amazing meals and her husband, Ray, was so kind to drive us up to Red Rock for a beautiful hike. They just took such great care of us during our stay.


It was like a cozy little hotel. Clare had a whole selection of toiletries for us. So cute!