Just Peachy Keen

After a much needed weekend at home in NYC after weeks of travel, I had the pleasure of visiting the Union Square Green market this weekend. In addition to a special surprise from Kate Spade, I was overwhelmed by the bounty of the late summer harvest. Corn, tomatoes of all colors...and my favorite, peaches! I picked up quite a few.

While they need a couple days to be juicy ripe for biting straight into, they are perfect for baking in the meantime. Ever since I purchased, Martha Stewart Pies and Tarts cookbook, I've been obsessed with this recipe for Pate Sucree, which is a nice sweet pie crust that is easy to make (especially with a food processor) and when baked is the flaky light crust that just melts in your mouth. Especially when it is covered in peaches!

I'm particularly fond of this free form galette style pie/tart which requires you simply roll out the dough, pile a fruit of your choice on top (mix it with 1/4 cup of sugar and the juice from half a lemon), and fold the edges in. Bake it for 45 minutes at 375 and it will be golden (literally)! I've made it with blueberries, peaches, and a mix of the two (as pictured). It made the end of family dinner just peachy!

Email of the Day

Sent by Meghan in correspondence regarding my visit to her house in West Hartford tomorrow...Needless to say, I can't wait for a suburban bake-a-thon.

This Weekend Was Sew Productive

My first weekend in NYC in a month was domestic to the max with a hint of spice-- yes, I got out on Saturday night. I vacummed, did laundry, got a facial, cleaned, ran errands, went running, made delicious lentil soup and finished my first home sewing project! (Am I housewife year old trapped in a 28 year old's body? Sometimes I wonder...)

I've had bare windows in my kitchen/living area ever since I moved in. I managed to put up some blinds to prevent any perv neighbors from watching me vacum in my birthday suit, but they're plain white-- borrrrrring. Since curtains seemed a little overwhelming for my first solo sewing project, so I decided to try something a little easier to practice my skills. So here they are:

Yes, some may say they turn my already nautical or childlike apartment into a circus, but they make me happy (and isn't that what apartments are supposed to do anyway?). Here's a close up of the happy flags, so you can marvel at my imperfect sewing skills:

I got the pattern/instructions from this little book called Home Sewn: 30 Projects for Every Room in the House. Lots of fun little projects in there-- next up, new tablecloth!

Winsor Reunion Part 2: Delayed Post for my Fabulous Hosts!

Delayed post, but must be documented that Erica and Meghan (the real working-but-living-in-houses wives of Connecticut) hosted Yasmin and me for a fabulous weekend in the burbs, two weeks back. We hung out at the lovely Fairfield town beach all day, and came home to hanging in the Beckers' yard (oh, to have a YARD!) with the dogs, sipping Meghan's Mango Mint Margaritas. The CT ladies prepared an amazing fresh summer meal of grilled chicken and veggies as we city dwellers watched the sunset from the hammock. They are living the suburban dream these ladies!! It will be a tough act to follow when Yasmin and I host them in lower Manhattan for our next reunion...

Early Start on Easter

Since I don't like eggs and I'm a horrible Jew, I decided to decorate cookies on the eve of passover. Why so soon you ask? Well, the bunny has to hop allllll the way across the country for some very special deliveries....
Sorry if the easter bunny leaves you out this year, you can blame a very hungry Saturday afternoon visitor who ate half of my supply of freshly baked and un-frosted carrots, bunnies and eggs.
If you want to sample some yourself, HOP TO IT (obvious/unavoidable pun intended)and get cookin-- same recipe as my spooky sweets and holiday treats.

Martha Approved, Stanny Family Agrees!

Friday night, Family Dinner with the Stanny gang resumed after a long hiatus. Ever since the Stanny Fam heard Martha say "This one's my favorite!" to our Lamb Tacos, they've been dying to try them. So Friday night Erin and I invaded Berto's kitchen and roasted up 3 racks of lamb tacos, while sipping on Lara's fabulous mango margs, and eating at least 3 avocados worth of Ballew's guac and salsa.
It was couples night at Family Dinner-- we cooked for Kait and Shine, Berto and Lara, Adam and "The visitor" (Sarah), Taco and Calzo, Ballew and Becca:
The tacos were a unanimous winner...though since everyone was at least 2 margs in by the time they tasted the winning dish, standards may have been slightly lower than Martha's. Whatever, we'll take it.

Surprise Weekend Visit

My Debut on MarthaStewart.com!!!

It's official: they even have a video featuring us in "coming soon" on the site...

Chances of me sleeping between now and Friday morning? Slim to none.

Mini Martha meets the Legend

OMG OMG I DONT EVEN KNOW WHAT TO SAY. AT THIS TIME NEXT WEEK I WILL BE ON NATIONAL TV WITH MARTHA STEWART!

The contest went like this:

We decided to be Team USA: Trapped in the Kitchen, because, well, who doesn't want to cheer for the USA? (And love R.Kelly's Trapped in the Closet) That would be completely unpatriotic. Plus I happen to have a lot of red white and blue. We dressed up and strung up a flag at our station. We met the judges beforehand: 3 Google NYC execs and celebrity chef Todd English. Naturally I told him I grew up going to Figs and Olives, and was from Newton. He signed a cookbook for me "Cooking with Love." My thoughts exactly, Todd.

Then we got set up for the relay. There were 3 tasks: peeling 4 hardboiled eggs, de-veining 6 shrimp, and trimming a hanger steak. I started with the eggs:

Lindsay peeled shrimp and Erin man handled that steak, with Todd looking on, impressed:

We came in second out of 6 teams in this round.

Then came the "cooking" round, which wasn't cooking at all, just 5 minutes to prepare an "amuse-bouche" with items from a microkitchen. It was slim pickings but we decided to go with a strawberry/banana toast made from strawberry, banana, yogurt on a cinamon sugar pita chip. Most other teams had a similar idea, but we WON 1st because of our creative presentation (using cupcake frosting to put dabs of Google color on the plate). What can I say, I'm in the creative lab!

We were happy:

This narrowed it down to three teams for the food trivia round. The questions were quite random, everything from the ratio of sugar to air in cotton candy, to the function of cream of tartar. We were neck and neck for second 5 questions in a row....NERVE RACKING! But we had an insane cheering squad (thanks to my team), complete with pom poms and USA cheers...

We finally got knocked out for not knowing the president responsible for importing the Olive Tree! BUT they decided to let us go to Martha anyway. This is a dream. Like, OMG a DREAM. I feel like jumping up and down. Oh wait, I did:

I can hardly wait.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Seriously, I left my place (for LA) in a state of LOVEly disrepair, covered in red and pink sparkles, paper, glitter, stickers, ribbons. I absolutely love Valentine's day- a perfect excuse to make everything girly, chocolate and full of LOVE! Here are some of the goodies that came out of the kitchen of Natalie Schwartz.
And don't feel unloved if you didn't receive them-- I didn't send them in the mail.

And Happy Birthday to Nikki and Cristina my favorite heart day birthday girls!

PS: I made these on Wednesday and on FRIDAY Martha sent out Conversation Cookies as her craft of the day. 2 days late Martha....plus, I think mine are cuter (just sayin)

Hope your day is full of Love and Chocolate! I just woke up on a sunny morning on the beach in LA, made some banana pancakes. This is true love. Can't wait to celebrate this glorious day with my sweethearts- Alex, Emily and Lauren :)

Totally Tom Sawyered

The best part of last week was getting a call from Bec on Thursday night to tell me she would be making a surprise one night stopover in NYC on Friday. OMG dream. I took her to Rocking Horse for dinner. Then I brought her home and she, like many family members before her, got Tom Sawyered into one of my projects.

It started when I showed her several options I had been working on for the team bachelorette invite, then we got talking and experimenting with different layouts, and as soon as you know it, we were in assembly line hand stamping and bow-tying the invites. It was hours later and after midnight that she realized "this is SO typical, I come over for one night, and you Tom Sawyer me into one of your projects." She claimed to be miserable, that I was keeping her there stamping, rather than going out with her friends....right.

I never have malicious intentions, I swear. It's just that I get excited about some project, my excitement is contagious, and as soon as you know it it's after midnight and you're hard at work executing a creative masterpiece (ok, maybe that's a stretch).

In any case, we had a lovely night of crafting, and she shouldn't really be complaining since I bought her dinner and baked her banana bread. Most of the time she looked a lot more happy like this:

BTW, these pics make me feel like the ugly stepsister. I should cut my hair and wear my glasses more often-- she is really pulling off that hot-sophisticate look.

Most importantly, together we managed to stamp, punch, tie and glue these invites together. Which, if I do say so myself, are pretty darn cute.

5 rings tied together at the top because there are 5 bachelorettes (Alex, Deej, Jess, MeganandAsh)

Supper Bowl

I convinced Adam to host the super/supper bowl party provided that Gleason and I cater/decorate. Sold.

Erin (aka the young barefoot contessa) went to TOWN and made homemade pulled pork sliders, mac and cheese, 7 layer dip and calzones. I mean, she prepared enough cheese and pork products to kill someone. My favorite were the sliders:

They were delicious and, well, devoured. I am not even going to include a recipe since Erin started on the pork preparation on Saturday night and it involved at least 10 spices and 7 hours of cooking. You could smell it in the lobby of our building all day. (PS: did I mention Erin moved into a one bedroom downstairs a couple weeks ago? UM, HEAVEN!)

Clearly I was not up for competing on the main course, but I was put on D&D duty: desert and decor. I stole a decor idea from Martha and using a green table cloth and colored electrical tape made this field/tablecloth.

For desert I finally found some oval pans at my favorite neighborhood shop (the 23rd street 99 cent store), made the football brownie (center). In honor of my favorite peanut-butter loving foreigner, I also made some peanut butter-chocolate oatmeal squares. They were covered in a layer of chocolate (clearly I needed a brown colored desert), and I put peanut butter in a ziplock to make an ad-hoc pastry bag to pipe the lines. Here's the peanut butter football:

Aside from the food, I paid a lot of attention to the commercials, cause, well, nbd but I was involved in making one of them. Everyone bet on the football scores... and several friends bet on the quarter I would fall asleep on the couch.

(3rd quarter)

Orla's Banoffee Pie

One of the best things about working at a Global company is visitors!! We have a lovely visitor in our group this quarter, from London, Orla. She had her first peanut butter sandwich at work last week and is now eating at least one a day (a girl after my own heart). Over lunch she mentioned her favorite desert: banoffee pie. I have no idea why I've never had this/heard of it before, but we made it Wednesday night. And it will not be the last time.

We found the recipe for this graham cracker-toffee-banana goodness from Paula Deen (sure sign that it will be delish/clog your arteries).

It's quite simple really-- you just mash the gram crackers in a plastic bag with a '"tea towel" around it:
Then you mix the grahams with plenty of butter and press them in a pie dish. Pop it in the oven for 6 minutes and voila!
Then on to the caramel: we modified the recipe slightly-- rather than this whole "poaching pan" business to caramelize the condensed milk, we just heated it in a small pot on medium heat for about 12 minutes, stirring continuously. (Tip from Orla's banoffee-master British friend)
When it's nice and sticky-icky (with some brown spots) you take the condensed milk-turned-caramel off the stove and put it into a bowl...
and then spread it on the crust!
Throw it in the fridge for 20 minutes or so. While it's chilling, you slice the bananas, and whip the cream:
After that, you just layer on the sliced bananas, whipped cream and some chocolate chunks or shavings (we did one pie of each) on top. So it looks like this:
Yummmmm? YES. Here's Orla smiling with her beloved pie!

Weekend Recap

I have been overcome by guilt for my delayed and infrequent posting. So here goes the weekend. Fri night got to see Molly and Seton and had a chili night at Pat's. Molly and I did the drinking, Pat and Seton cooked up the hottest chili north of the Mason Dixon (or however that saying goes). It ended in a drunken game of "5s" at a lower east side dive with a dozen theta delts that I may or may not have known in my past life.

Saturday was the much anticipated "trip to the country" to visit Erica. Ever since Yas, Erica and I have been doing dinners in the city, we have talked about venturing off the island (gasp)..to Connecticut to see Erica's digs. So after at least 2 dozen planning emails, we settled on a date when the city girls could visit our future MILF friends (Eric and Meghan) in the burbs. Lizzy decided to surprise us last minute and drove from Boston so it was quite the gathering.
The day was a dream, and brought me straight back to high school days. Not only because Fairfield is the Wellseley of the Tri State area, but also because we spent most of the day crusing around town in an SUV, stopping at the candy store to catch a sugar high, and snacking/gossiping while seated on the floor in a well decorated living room (this time it was not our parents'). I also brought a rolling duffle full of craft supplies as the girls requested a creative activity....
I came back to the city after our glorious day in the suburbs and had a miserable 24 hours. I got sick, decided to run the sunday morning half marathon anyway, focusing 100% of the time not barfing, finished it but had to walk the last 2 miles, and spent the rest of Sunday in bed.

I did manage to drag myself over to Adam's for family dinner, though I unfortunately was not able to indulge in the fabulous roast chicken, salad and "these are quite possibly the best" potatoes. But it was still lovely to spend the night in sweats, cuddling with the family.

Jen and Hal's Cookie Press Package

Horray! Hal (finally) popped the question to my little, Jen over Christmas break (yes this is delayed, sorry). To celebrate their engagement, I created some cookies with this Message-in-a-cookie set that Jen gave me for Christmas. The set comes with individual letters, and you are supposed to slide them into the gingerbread man, snowflake and ordament cookie cutters. However, I just used the individual letters and pushed them by hand into heart cookies (purchased at my Michael's binge)
Pressing in each letter by hand was a labor of love...and it took me more than one "NEJ" and "LAH" to figure out how to make all the words and letters go in the correct direction. They did come out a little off center and imperfect, but the result was still pretty good for my first try, if I do say so myself ;)

I then packaged them up in a little cookie box which I had in my craft drawer, duh, and sent them off. I added the card below that I made with my new embossed diamond ring craft punch (Martha Stewart Crafts at Michaels, obvi), and it was quite a crafty little engagement surprise.

I'm definitely going to experiment some more with these imprinted cookies, since I really don't think I've seen them before. Perhaps there is a market for them? I could call it CookiePress Perhaps?