Summer Desserts

I made two delicious desserts for a BBQ this past weekend and they were so yummy, that I wanted to share the recipes with my readers.

The best thing about both recipes is that they are easy. Not so easy that you don't have a sense of accomplishment, but easy enough that even inexperienced bakers won't screw it up.

The first comes courtesy of the blog Karen in the Kitchen. I was directed to the blog by my friend, Fanny, who is a friend of Karen in the Kitchen. The blog is wonderfully written, with loads of pictures and very clear cooking instructions. I'm looking forward to trying more recipes from the site and I urge everyone to check it out. Beyond recipes, it's filled with great cooking tips.

I made Karen's Chocolate Eclair Dessert, which can be found in the Baking section of her blog, under desserts.

Check it out...

Karen in the Kitchen

I had several party guests mention that the dessert tasted like a Bavarian cream donut. It was wonderful.

I found the second dessert recipe on one of my favorite websites, allrecipes.com. Allrecipes is my go-to site for new ideas. I had already planned on making the Chocolate Eclair Dessert and was looking for a second, non-chocolate dessert as a different option.

The name is what first caught my attention.

The Better than Brad Pitt Cake.

And it was.

No offense to Brad.

The Better than Brad Pitt Cake has a yellow cake base with a pineapple and vanilla pudding sauce. The result was very light and tasty. It was the perfect compliment to a heavy summer bbq meal.

Check out the recipe here..

Better than Brad Pitt Cake

Timothy Oulton- When Furniture is Art

I grew up in a tasteless house. It was bad.

In the 80's our 70's era shag rust was replaced with a thick, dark brown carpet. The interior of our house was repainted several times, each time in the same color, Smurf Blue. As if to attempt to blend in with the carpet, our furniture was all heavy oak wood and the walls were decorated with pictures of ships that my mom bought from the Franklin Mint.

It was horrid.

Here are a few pictures to illustrate my point.

The first is my childhood bedroom. A bit of backstory... when I was about eight, my mom tried a brief attempt at reverse psychology when she decided to stop pressuring me to clean my room. It was a bit of "You'll see, you won't be able to stand it when it gets out of control." Much to my mom's dismay, it didn't work. I didn't care if it was messy and the experiment lasted less than a week. Mom caved first.

Before making me clean it, she took pictures of the mess as an attempt to shame me. Those pictures went right into the family album, between Christmas and Easter, as a reminder of my sloth. Apparently, I should have had the sensibility to be embarrassed.

Look beyond the mess. I'm posting the picture to show our tacky brown carpet and brown furniture. It blends. It's horrid.

Hey, that's a Secret of Nimh playset on the chair!

Here's a second picture that shows some of our living room. This was before the walls were painted the Smurf Blue. The Smurf Blue reign lasted from the very early eighties until I inherited the house in 2008.

Shown are two of the many ship pictures that decorated our home. When I inherited the house, I kept wanting to say "Shit Pictures" when talking about them, because that's how much I dislike them.

As you might expect, my taste when decorating my own home was only marginally better. For better or worse, when I moved in with my now, former husband, we agreed on how to decorate our home. We were starting out and most of our decorating was done on the cheap. We had a mix of furniture from my childhood bedroom (heavy oak bookcase, oak/brass dresser) and stuff that he acquired when he moved to California. We made up of the difference at Ikea.

I divorced and inherited my childhood home in the same year. My first order of business was to gut the house. I tore out the carpet and put in hardwood. Every inch of the kitchen was redone. Out went the dark wood cabinets and in went white ones. Everything was made lighter and more open.

I repainted, although according to some, I didn't do much better than my mom with the Smurf Blue. I painted a majority of the house a light creamy yellow. However, I had fun with the individual rooms. My master bedroom was a lavender, the master bath a pale green and the office a punchy coral. I paid homage to the smurf blue with a similar color in the downstairs bathroom.

When Dan moved in, we repainted and the contractor had a few comments. He said that the upstairs would be great at Easter time. He then offered to repaint the downstairs bathroom for free, because he felt that we might be embarrassed if we had guests.

Call if tacky, but I still stand-by my paint choices! They made me happy.

I redid my house in 2008, but I still kept most of my own furniture and I didn't put any pictures up. It looked better than the way my mom had it, but only slightly. It lacked a sense of style and was sloppy.

Dan moved in and we dumped most of my furniture. I think it looks good now, but Dan is constantly coming up with a new way to rearrange the furniture or wanting to get something new. I resist change!

Until yesterday.

Yesterday, was the first time in my life that I've been blown away by beautiful furniture. We took a trip to HD Buttercup in Culver City. HD Buttercup is a designer furniture gallery located in the historic Helms Bakery factory. It's enormous.

When I first entered the store, I was completely overwhelmed trying to process all of the cool furniture. It took us about half an hour before we reached the back of the store and fell in love.

Timothy Oulton designs the coolest furniture that I have ever seen. The rest of the furniture at HD Buttercup pales in comparison.

It is so cool, that without hesitation, I am willing to spend over two thousand dollars on a bookcase and it would be worth every penny.

Dan loved it all too. Here is the problem, all of it was so inspiring, that we can't possibly decide on how to proceed. We spoke with the Timothy Oulton gallery manager, Javier, who was incredibly nice and genuinely as excited about the art as we were. Let's make no mistake, this is not mere furniture, each piece is a work of art.

We sat on an amazing Timothy Oulton leather couch and soaked in all of the art, trying to figure out how to make it work in our home. We sat silently, Dan's gears working on floor plans and visuals. Me, wondering how many banks we can rob to buy more pieces.

Our house is simply not cool enough for the furniture. Okay, how can we come up with the money for a new house in addition to the new furniture? Sigh.

Javier gave us info sheets on all of our favorite pieces and we headed next door to Father's Office for beers and to obsess over furniture.

Here are some pictures from Oulton's Facebook page.

We are thinking of the smaller version of the wood drawers in very back of this picture. Just the drawers, not the bookshelf on top.

We absolutely loved this chair.

And this chandelier lamp.

They come in a variety of sizes, some table top and some huge for hanging.

One of my favorite pieces is this bed.

I couldn't even find pictures of some of our absolute favorite pieces. I look forward to being able to post pictures of a newly remodeled living room with some Timothy Oulton art in the future. We have big ideas and now we need to figure out how to expand our budget!

We kept saying the word aluminum repeatedly all day, that I even caught Dan pronouncing it the American way, rather than the British "Ah-Loo-Minny-Um". It was a rather sad result and I am sorry to be a bad influence.

Check out the Timothy Oulton website for more beautiful designs.

Timothy Oulton Official Site

New Year, New Gadget - Nutribullet Review

It happened on a lazy, rainy Sunday, we were lying in bed, channel surfing, defenses weak, when we came landed on it, the Nutribullet informercial.

We were sold and ordered it within ten minutes. No kidding.

I'm generally a big skeptic when it comes to quick fixes or fad diets. Even ordering this, I wasn't convinced (still not) that it actually does everything that it claims to do. I'm really skeptical of the testimonials and let's face it, David Wolfe comes across as a bit nuts. He just has the "crazy eye" going on and nobody has that much energy from veggies. I don't quite buy the whole "Nutrition Extraction"..what does that even mean? It's a high powered blender., you put everything in and grinds it up. It's not extracting anything.

All that being said, Dan and I were excited to try it, because getting more fruits and veggies into our diet is an overwhelmingly positive move. Even if the device is a bit of hyperbole, the advice as to what to put into it, is solid. We have a blender, but not one that crushes up everything so fine.

We didn't have it sent rushed delivery, but it still arrived within five days. We had our first smoothie (blast, if you want to use their lingo) on Saturday, as a lunch replacement. The Nutribullet calls for a minimum of blend of 1/2 greens and 1/2 fruit. You can go heavier on the greens. They also want you to add some nuts or essential oils, like olive oil for some good fat. The remainder is filled with water, almond milk or tea. They want you to steer clear of fruit juice, unless it's pure and even then, that's a lot of sugar.

We headed to our local Whole Foods on Saturday morning to stock up. I thought that it would break the bank, but found out that Whole Foods is cheaper than Ralphs, when you go for frozen fruit and bulk nuts. We walked out with the following.

Fresh- baby spinach, rainbow Kale, bananas, pears, apples

Frozen- pineapple, strawberries, mango, raspberries, blueberries

Bulk- pumpkin seeds, walnuts, almonds, goji berries, figs

Admittedly, it doesn't sound appetizing or look great when you are loading up the blender. Here is our first time using the Nutribullet, Dan's drink.

Dan's first blast.

Dan's drink...banana, pear, kale, spinach, mango, pumpkin seeds, a fig

The Nutribullet in action.

And here is the video we made.

The big question, how did it taste? Good. It's not like the sugary junk that you get at Jamba Juice. It tastes healthy and you do taste the greens, although the fruit does a good job at masking the flavor. Pear is a really strong taste. I happen to love vegetables and greens, so I have no problem with a heavier greens taste. I think that people who don't have an affinity for veggies, might have trouble drinking it.

The Nutribullet does a great job at finely chopping all of the chunks. I read reviews from people who said that it had chunks, but I think that they didn't run the machine long enough. The consistency is thick, depending on what you put in your drink. Some people have mentioned that it's slimy and again, I think that if you have an aversion to certain consistencies, this might not be the product for you. I like veggies and textures don't bother me, so it works.

Why buy a Nutribullet, when you already have a blender? Well, convenience. It grinds everything fast, is much easier to clean and the cups come with lids that convert them to to-go cups. The Nutribullet also comes with a little hardback recipe and idea book. There are blends that never would have occurred to me.

We have had five blasts in three days, all of them acting as meal replacements. So far, so good. They are filling and between the two of us, we went through all of the spinach and I had to run out to buy more. I have not noticed feeling better or different, as testimonials and reviews have touted, but just knowing that I am eating so much more of the right foods is good enough for me.

HyperSmash